I had an unexpected day off in the middle of last  week. For Christmas, my sister had given her husband and our dad the gift of a striped bass fishing tour.  Fast forward to mid April and Colleen texted me that there was room on the boat and asked if I wanted to come on May 16th.  I said yes in my mind thinking the 16th must be a weekend because why would it be scheduled on a weekday?  Then promptly didn’t think about it again with my overworked brain.

Then a week or so before the excursion, I asked John if he was going to need the car that Saturday. I said Saturday the 16th. He said that was the 19th. Puzzled confusion at this point and I realize that the fishing trip was actually a Wednesday LOL.  It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know that when Colleen asked or I likely would have said no. However, I deserved a day off and John could cover for me.

The tour was on the Hudson. Here is the dock:

Our boat was the last one on the right.  Not a very big boat. There was the captain and his first mate, plus the four of us. I think that would be the max.

The tour went into the Hudson. It is striped bass season and you don’t need a fishing license, but you do need a marine registry to fish for it. In NY, it is free to get this, which is pretty nice! Not only that, but you could register online and print out your registry. One of those times when technology is so awesome!

Ready to go!

We moved around to various spots, but didn’t have much luck with the striped bass. My father hooked one, but it got off the line before he could get it in.

Waiting for fish (I was snacking 😀 )

This is the Hudson and there are a fair number of bridges that cross it. When a larger boat goes through, they don’t lift the bridge, but it gets turned:

This bridge was for trains.  The boat goes through and they close it back up.  That boat on the right had a large antennae on it, which is just visible in the picture. They didn’t think it would fit under the bridge, so it was opened to let them through.  On a side note, there is an osprey nest at the top of that bridge and we saw one of the adults a few times flying around.

Striped bass eat herring, so our captain was fishing for herring during the tour for our bait. I wanted to try it, so he set me up with the pole and special lures.

Catching herring is really easy. Who knew?  Here I am handing one off to the captain to put in the bait bucket:

My herring:

I also caught a perch. We were trying to make it look bigger by putting it closer to the camera LOL!

He got sent back into the river to live another day.

While no one caught a bass, it was a nice day to be out on the boat and relaxing with family!