It's called Fishing not Getting for a reason: I'm just not used to not catching!

I was hoping this post would be about my fishing trip; well it is about my fishing Sunday before Labor Day, but I had hoped I would be posting pictures of my trout and pan fish I had caught and grilled.  But alas, it is not.  No pictures not even a bite!

Instead, I spent about two hours TRYING to fish.  I have been in this part of Illinois for six years this November, and have only been fishing twice.  I need to say coming from the south, this has been a culture shock when it comes to the way the DNR is handled in Illinois.  It definitely does not make it EASY for a person to participate in hunting and fishing sports.  So finding a good spot to go fishing to relax near Chicago is just laborious.

I thought I had found a spot as it read as a  nice place, but I got there and it is nothing as described.  Its a wet marsh that is shallow and although fish abide there, it is so pressured and overworked, all that seem to persist are less than finger sized bluegill.  I don't have a hook that small!  Add to it that apparently the definition of fishing is different here than it is where I come from.  

What I am used to is being able to sit on the bank and throw a line in and enjoy the sun, the lake and occasionally a fellow fisherman and a kid or two tapping each other for information for success.  What I got was people in boats on a 20 acre lake, stopping feet from where my line was, and talking so loud it echoed across the POND (Not lake).  Then kids coming in with their parents and walking the bank a few feet away as they yell at the top of their lungs and throw rocks in where you're trying to fish.  Add to that the occasional dog walker that doesn't have enough courtesy to keep their dog on a leash around your spot but instead lets them loose to swim right where you're fishing!   Not only is it not safe for the dog HOW FRIKIN' RUDE!!!!!!!

So it is clear I need a boat or some sort of flotation and need to travel a little further north to the Chain of Lakes so I can experience some kind of fishing that allows me to CATCH a fish and at least relax as the sport is supposed to do.  Deer season is coming up and I pray that hunting is not the same experience.

So here's to Labor day grilling today with steak and bratwurst since I have no caught fish.  I hope I can do a grill sometime in October or November and there be venison or rabbit on the menu.