Another hobby that I do regularly

Not only do I deer hunt...but I also enjoy taking my old 16 ft aluminum modified V hull to the lake about one day every week for crappie fishing.
Yesterday, for example, Ron and I were on the lake by 9:30 a.m. and headed to my favorite site to catch crappie.
First, I'll describe a little about my boat. I bought it in June, 2006 and it required many hours to totally renovate the entire boat and trailer. Nothing was untouched or left undonen. For example, even the stainless steel screws and bolts were replaced and installed when they were missing. The entire floor had to be cleaned, scraped, wire wheeled, etc. to get off the existing glue used to hold the old carpet down. That was probably the hardest job. Beyond that I used various techniques to renew the heavily oxidized boat surfaces both inside and out. Wire wheel, hand brush, putty knife, grinder, and more were used to eventually get all that crud off. Then I installed a new decal (Sea Nymph) which I bought on Ebay....and installed a spare tire. Even the boat trailer was just about as delapidated as the boat when I first started. So I ran totally new wiring the the boat, installed new front and rear lights, installed new cleats on both sides, and the project went on and on and on...till the last thing was to install an outboard motor and electric trolling motor. I eventually bought a NIB 15 HP 4 stroke, short shaft, outboad motor which has an electric starter and generator. With that all done I was ready for some fun.
So back to fishing yesterday. Ron and I launched the boat, went to a concrete pier under a bridge where I've yet to fail getting plenty of legal size crappie. Here the minimum legal size is 9". Within four hours we had our limit of 15 very nice crappie with three being 11". We used medium sized minnows as bait. One thing I've learned is to look over my crappie cage in the water carefully for snakes because they seem to like crappie. Two weeks ago one slithered away when I reached for the cage to put another crappie inside. Then last week another snake was bearing straight for me when I clobbered it with a telescoping pole I carried ikn the boat for various purposes. I then picked it up with the end of the pole and slung it about 30 ft where a sea gull quickly dived down for an easy meal.
Anyway, back to fishing. After we finished catching those crappie we headed to a suitable place to fillet them. My buddy had never filled before so I demonstrated on two crappie before turning him loose on one to do by himself. Man...when I looked over at the board where he was attempting to fillet...there was nothing but pieces of scale, blood, and guts. Nothing from that fish was salvagable.(ha) He'll get better...or get hungry first.(ha) However, I gave him all my crappies so he and his wife could have a nice fish fry some day.
So...this scenario happens almost every week when the weather is nice. Now that's what I call the good life for a retiree.