The
Fishing Fairies 
The
Fishing Fairies
and our
Fishing Trips
*we welcome all fairies, non-fairies, and friends of fairies to join our fishing club.
The next Fairy Fishing Trip is: November 13, 2009
The
Fairy's Fishing
Talley
Caught 2009:
Mitch T. 8, Kamran: 1 , Denise O.: 1 , Adrienne: 1 (sorta)
Keepers:
Mich T.: 4
NOVEMBER 4, 2009:
This was our first trip as the Fishing Fairies Group for
2009. We headed out to our favorite spot in West Sacramento. We got there about
5PM or so, and dusk was just starting to set. This is the cold time of year, so
we tried to dress warm and keep our hopes high. Unfortunately, we weren't
able to buy the clams we wanted from the bait shop, so we had to settle for
night-crawlers. Most of the evening was uneventful, but it was a nice way to
wind down the day.
"A" and "M" both are teachers and had to handle grades for the end of the quarter. "A" was a bit stressed out, and clearly overworked. But, she seemed to have a good time during the fishing trip, and we made it an easy evening. Not much happened till the end of the night. We each caught one. "M" got the first catfish of the night, small but feisty. "A" caught the next one, it seemed much bigger, or at least its splash was bigger, but it snapped the line just as she was getting it onto the bank. Mine was the last, very tiny, little fishy. I didn't know what kind it was, but I first thought I caught something, then my reel got a "bird's nest" with the fishing line all tangled up, and finally after I got that undone, I snagged the line. So, as I was reeling it in, there was a little fish still at the end of the hook. What a surprise!!
We are humane fishing fairies, and we try to do the "catch and release" method of fishing. Once we catch a fish, we carefully and quickly unhook it and release it alive back into the water. We don't kill the fish if we can help it, or unless we plan to eat it. Now, the point is to save the fish any unnecessary suffering. This night was almost a comical attempt at this "humane treatment" idea.
When "M" tried to release her fish, we had to first unhook it, but it swallowed the hook. It took pliers and a lot of pulling to get it out, but we managed to pull out the hook but with part of the stomach still attached to it. Then "M" hooked the gills though a thin rope (which is the proper way to collect the fish) and put it in the water to keep it alive, cause, hey, we are still trying to be humane. I then managed to snag the collection rope with catfish still attached while reeling in my line, and ended up dragging the catfish onto the bank, so its now on the embankment, basically suffocating. Well, finally after we got my line untangled from the collection rope, "M" threw it back into the water, but, she threw it short, and it ended up on the embankment again. She tried 3 more times, and kept pummeling it onto the shore of where we were standing, completely missing the water. So, in our efforts to humanely handle this fish, we managed to pull out its stomach, drag it onto the shore, suffocate it in the air, and slam it into the ground 3 times. I felt SO SORRY for the fish. In the end, "M" released it back into the water, where I'm pretty sure it promptly died of shock.
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