Lake Norman Area

Stopped by the gas station, put $3 in the bait machine – yes – bait machine, and headed out to the lake. For those of you not from our area, we have machines sort of like Coke machines that dispense live bait. Really. Stick in $3 and a white Styrofoam cup drops down with a dozen worms wiggling around in nice black dirt. $3 also gets you a dozen live crickets, but I won’t touch those jumping things so we took a pass and went for a worm-only day. Now, I’m ashamed to tell you that my son had never handled a live earthworm and was quite grossed out by the entire process of baiting the hook. When I was little my brothers and I used hot dogs for bait and it worked really well, so we brought some dogs out too. Our local fishing “expert” said the fish were biting everywhere you dropped a line. Hmm. Not for me. Oh, one did bite. As soon as he saw the bobber disappear, my son pulled the pole hoping for a big one. Snap! The line broke. Turns out I was supposed to have replaced the cheap, thin line that came with the pole to something heftier. We had 2 more poles with good line, so in they went. 2 hours passed by with not even another nibble. Meanwhile, fish were jumping all around. Taunting. Teasing. We finally gave it up and headed for home. Friends came for dinner that night and shared their knowledge of fishing. They claim fish here bite for corn. Corn? Like the kernels from a can? Yep. We vowed to try again in a few weeks. I’ll report back and let you know if corn does the trick.