Well since one of my best friends, Luke Donat, was so kind as to post a fishing story about me in his blog, and due to the fact that I would not be out here fishing and blogging about it if it weren't for him, I've decided to tell one of my favorite Luke Fishing Stories.
When Luke and I were stationed in Cherry Point, NC, we were roomies for a while. He had taken me fishing numerous places and taught me everything I know about saltwater fishing. So, when he ran up to me after work at about 4:00 and said, "Dude! Hop in my truck, the trout are running at Fort Macon!", I didn't question it and hopped in his truck. I didn't question it even though the park was only open until 5:30, it was pouring rain, I didn't know how he knew there were trout there, and....trout? In the ocean? WTF was he talking about?
We sped down to the Fort, grabbed our gear and our rain coats and headed out on the treacherous rock jetty. I was young at the time, so even though it seemed dangerous as the wind, rain and surf was pummeling us as we balanced precariously on the large head-cracking slippery rocks, it was fun and exciting.
We started casting, if memory serves me correctly, we were using shrimp on red jig-heads. He was right. The trout were running. Speckled trout. Trout in the ocean. Did not see that coming. We decimated them, which was good, because we only had about 15 minutes to fish. In that time, we caught at least a dozen healthy size trout.
This was on a Friday and we had the weekend off. Well Luke's parents lived up in Greenville, so we decided to head up there and have a nice trout dinner with his mom. Well, not only can Luke catch them, but he knows how to cook them too. We went to cleaning our catch and he explained that they were big enough that we could just fillet off the "good stuff". I grabbed my trout and the fillet knife and something hit me. Even though I grew up fishing out west, I had always fished with my dad and....had never cleaned a fish. Ever.
Needless to say, I butchered it. Probably only got about 70% of the meat that I could have. Lol, the sad part is I still suck at it. Even big 'ol Red Drum I can't fillet worth a damn. I usually just go Japanese style and bake the whole damned thing and pick the meat off with chopsticks.
Luke cooked up the trout fillets with lemon and orange slices while his mom cooked up all the sides. It was one of the nicest relaxing moments that were so very few and far apart during life in the corps. So here's to Luke, who taught me everything I know about saltwater fishing, was there for pretty much every first catch of each saltwater species, and didn't laugh at me too hard when he found out I didn't know how to clean a fish ;)
Man that was fun. That trout fishing out there is amazing!
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