A Day He'll Never Forget

By Jerry Gardner

A young friend of mine, Cam Wallis, and I spent a few hours fishing part of Moyock Creek this morning. This was Cam's second time fishing with me and, at the start of the day, still was looking to catch his first-ever freshwater fish. After dealing with several missed strikes, Cam finally hooked up with this 1-lb. 10-oz. pickerel to claim the title of his first fish.

If you follow the time stamps on the photos, you'll see that, less than 20 minutes later, Cam also boated his first-ever bass. The junebug Senko that he caught both fish on probably was bigger than the bass, but, for Cam, that bass still was a "trophy" fish.

These two fish were all that Cam would remove the hook from today, but combined with all the missed strikes and seeing me boat four bass and a pickerel, I think it's safe to say that bass fishing has a new fan.

Our best bass of the day was this one, which just reached the 14-inch mark on my "golden rule."



Fish were hard to find today, but Cam admits this is a day he'll never forget.