Mardi Gras Fish Fry at St. Patrick's...

We had a great Mardi Fras Party at St. Patick's Catholic Church. Proceeds from fish dinners donated and cooked by the Knights of Columbus and Pop-Pop's Famous Gumbo which I cooked went to our church St. Vincent de Paul Conference. Looks like we sold about 125 plates and they were good heavy servings of fish and all the gumbo you could eat. 

If you know anything about SVDP you should know that it's a world wide organization that helps our neighbors in need.  Different conferences do things like food pantries, thrift stores and food kitchens but our group seems to have found a place helping the working poor who have hit some kind of bump in the road that got them behind on bills or people that have become stuck in our city and need help for a a bus ticket to a place where they have more support. It's necessary for our neighbors to have a way forward and the basics of our ministry is a home visit to determine how we can help since our funds are limited to what is donated by the members of our church which we could see by the success of this fish fry is solid.     
 

If you ever wondered what you can do to help people, this is it. 

It was great to see Father Denzil back in action. He has been laid up recovering from a back surgery and he has been very instrumental in starting our group and it's been unusual to not have his energy present in the parish.  

Cathy decorated for the party while I cooked. If everyone has a ministery or a calling I guess one of ours is throwing a great party. Thanks to all who helped with cooking, serving, clean up and more. 

 My grandson Milo stood behind me in our newly remodeled hall kitchen begging, "bite, bite" all the while I cooked.   

Fishing Started Out Slow But Then Almost All of Us Caught Something...

 Cathy's brother John and his wife Mari recently retired to Lake Jacksonville. This put John within reach of joining Cathy, me and brother Matt for a fishing trip this afternoon to Lake Sam Rayburn. With Hanks Creek closed due to rising water I bought a Senior County Park pass to launch at Cassels Boykin Park. It was cheap enough and who knows when Hanks will be open again. Cassels Boykin is a nice park but the campsites are not on the water and we loaded the boat during a bass tournament weigh in. I don't know who won but we managed a nice catch of 17, mostly blue cats to about 3.5 pounds. 

Fishing started slow. With the lake about 3' higher than our last outing we did not find them in the same spot. Finally about the fourth spot I tossed a maker buoy at a creek channel edge and started getting good bites under slip corks fished 8' deep. Everybody managed a good one except Cathy who unusually was skunked for the day.  I guess she was just letting her brothers have a good time.

This was taken at the "Horseshoe" which has produced 10 pound fish in the past. No fish here against the trees, everything at the creek edge behind us. I see from the online fishing reports that guides are beginning to target catfish on this lake and producing some fantastic catches. They are probably using livescope to spot the big fish and good live bait. We are doing alright with stink bait, a simple depth finder and marker buoys. I don't think I want to skin any bigger fish than I have been. 

Two at a time. 

 The usual suspects joined us for supper, ate half of what we caught and I bagged the rest which I think I will pack up in the nice RV freezer for a fish fry at Morgan's house in Greenville S.C. next week.  

I used a different Dutch oven for frying and though I set the cooker on fire for a minute I think once I get used to the differences it is going to cook just fine.