Mr. Bee's dad is visiting from a remote island in the Philippines (it takes two days of travel to get here), so we wanted to do something a little extra fun and took him fishing upstate last Wednesday. (Mr. Bee is not Filipino -- his parents just retired there. Someone always asks me that question when I mention the Philippines.)
We stayed at the Tack Room at the Inn at Lake Joseph, which was nice and large and had an adjacent second bedroom. Mr. Bee and I have stayed at this Inn two other times -- it's a two hour drive from the city, and a nice mellow place to escape every once in awhile.
Boats and kayaks are available for free through the Inn. This is a private lake only for the residents of Lake Joseph, so often you're the only one on the entire lake.

This is a catch and release lake, so it's teeming with large mouth bass, pikerel, and crappie.
We picked up nightcrawlers as bait from the local hardware shop.
Mr. Bee's dad was the only one to catch any fish! He caught this pickerel as soon as he dropped his line into the water.
This was his second fish.

We didn't head out on a boat because they only seat two, and you need to row row row your boat manually. You just have to bring your own battery and the Inn will let you borrow a motor.

I'd never used floaters before, but Mr. Bee's dad showed me that they work!
Next time we're definitely taking one of the boats because this guy caught 11 large mouth bass and 6 pickerel in 4 hours.
We set our remaining nightcrawlers free after we were done.
Hope you had a fabulous 4th of July!
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