Fathers Day will be here soon.

Sunday afternoon while waiting at the Thomaston public landing for my clients I saw something that I had only seen one other time. An osprey dove and successfully caught a herring. While he was flying off with his prize an eagle appeared and began to harass the osprey. For several minutes it was quite a display of aerial ability with the more maneuverable osprey seeming to be able to avoid but not escape the eagle. After repeated dives from the eagle and an equal number of successful rolls twists and dives by the osprey. The osprey gave up and let go of the fish. At that moment a second eagle appeared to help the first one look for the herring that must have swum right off because neither of the birds came up with it. I saw the same display several years ago while waiting for a canoe trip party on Seven Tree Pond in Union. The eagles are a regular feature of my striper fishing trips these days and I have come to expect to see at least a couple in the course of a morning. Often they stay on a perch and let us drift quite close.

Last Saturday was the annual open water Kids Fishing Event at Ayer Park here in Union. The attendance continues to grow for this event and I would estimate that we had seventy five kids in attendance. The big news is that the fish were very cooperative! Almost everyone caught at least one fish and several kids caught more than one. In fact I baited the hook of one boy who proudly told me that he had caught six. We had a few very nice bass caught right from the beach including one smallmouth that would have easily gone three pounds. When the girl hooked it and it jumped clear of the water the first time she screamed loudly and handed the rod to her mother when the fish jumped again the mother started to scream nearly as loudly as her daughter. For a few minutes we had quite a show with lots of excited shouting. The fish was landed had his photo opportunity and was returned to the water. Overall a very successful day for everyone, adults and children.