Jug Fishing with Andy and Denise Part 5

We are surrounded by comedians!
Our menu board got another update after we left for the river.

Memorial Day Weekend has come and gone and our vacation week is pretty much a closed chapter. Andy and I love to have our friends and family down to relax and enjoy all the fun being near water offers. This week is also prime time for catching catfish. Andy cleaned 48 catfish by Tuesday. We had a fish fry one night, shared some and still have plenty bagged up and frozen for several meals. 

I've got several recipes I'll be sharing over several posts. You know something is good when your family asks..."are you fixing...?" Andy's Taters and Onions tops the list and gets gobbled up fast! This dish can be fixed on the grill (with a minor modification) or in the oven. He added a new mystery meat for our guests to sample along with pork loin chops and leg quarters...BBQ Bologna and it was a big hit! Andy's birthday was last Saturday and he requested a strawberry pie instead of a buttermilk pie (his favorite). Because of this, I had an extra pie crust. When I was figuring out what to fix for breakfast one morning while Andy started pressure-washing docks, decks and steps, I saw that extra pie crust; did a quick mental inventory of what we had on hand and a Ham and Mushroom Quiche was served up about an hour later. 

Speaking of breakfast, no river trip would be complete without fried corn, biscuits, bacon and tomato slices. Monday morning, Andy, Dale, Amanda, Blair, Kevin and I took off immediately after we ate to check our limb lines. I had fried several pounds of bacon for breakfast and had almost 2 lbs. left to use in a salad and for sandwiches. I wrapped the pan in aluminum foil and took off. The trip was going to be a quick one...but just enough time for our neighbor's dog to sniff out that bacon and devour all of it. :-( The only consolation was he ate the left over fried corn. I'd say he was cleaned out pretty well after that trip.

After posting our Jug Fishing videos a couple weeks ago, we had several people tell us how much they prefer using "noodles" instead of jugs. Well you know we had to give it a try and we are 100% in agreement. They store better and offer a lot of fun when you snag a big one! Tuesday, we got an 8 lb. catfish on the line and the noodle totally disappeared only to come up quite a distance further from where it went down. Several times we were wondering if we had anything on the line because it "looked odd" and there would be a fish with "eye problems". His eyes were too close to his tail, so they all went back into the river. 

Andy cut each noodle into four equal pieces. He used enough black catfish line to loop through the hole, tie and still have around 10-12 feet of line to fish with; a 3/8 oz. egg sinker and 2 0 Eagle Claw bait holder. When we are done for they day, we "wind them up" and stick the hook in the noodle. An old milk crate is perfect for storing your fishing noodles.

This eight-pound catfish stretched the whole length of the cleaning table (28").

Kevin took over my "job" which is to catch and haul in the noodles while Andy navigates. I'm so thankful!!! 

Andy adds another one to the stringer.

Margie gets ready to throw a baited noodle off into the river.

Margie "reeled" one in...good eating size!

One of the mountain goats carefully tread the bluffs and surprised us! Normally they are spotted high up on the rock walls of the bluff walking on ledges that appear impossible to cling to.

The pictures do not do adequately show how steep these bluffs are. This fellow didn't seem to have a problem.

Blue Herons were everywhere. This one finally got settled after landing on a log that rolled. We got quite a laugh out of it! It reminded us of one of those competitions where loggers jump on and test their balance skills. The log started spinning so fast and he was high-step rolling with it!