USA, Portland, 50 km from the city, lakes

Well, here we go... our long-awaited dream has come true... We ended up in the USA, me with my wife and my buddy Akber (aik694), visiting our friend Dmitrius, who lives in Portland, Maine, 150 km from Boston... Naturally, the program is packed (drive around half the USA), but time was set aside for fishing too. On the third day of our stay here, we decided to go fishing on the lakes, with 2 boats. The city of Portland is in the state of MAINE, which is also called "the State of 150 lakes and lobsters". And sure enough, there are lakes nearby, many of them connected to each other, so you can get from one lake into another, from there into another and so on... Early in the morning we got into two cars, loaded all our gear into one of them (a pickup) and off we went... Me, Akber, Dima and Oleg – his brother-in-law. On the way we bought bait: at an ordinary gas station store not far from the lake we bought worms - earthworms in a jar, 24 worms per jar for 3 bucks. We bought 2 jars - one jar for each boat. The worms are raised in Canada, specifically for fishing. You've never seen worms like these in your life... It's simply impossible to bite through the worm with your fingernails - people bring scissors on purpose to cut the worms... After that, we stopped at another place to buy minnows – minnows are sold 12 for 5 bucks. We took 3 portions. We got to the lake, Oleg's friend has a house right on the lake with his own pier. We inflated one boat, the second one sits on the pier always inflated. We loaded up and set off. The technique goes like this: catch perch on worms and minnows. Little pike bite along the way too. Once you've caught some perch, you pick out the small ones, put them on a treble hook and cast for Bass. Bass – a big perch. It takes minnows, perch and little pike. Bass is a very strong fish, it can break and straighten treble hooks. A couple of hours later we'd caught a ton of perch and little pike and started casting for bass. Perch on a treble hook, a 50 cm leader and a float – a plastic ball that can hold up the bait perch. We had to wait a long time. Something hit my live bait lightning fast, yanked the float underwater with a sharp jerk and that was it... Silence... I pull it in – no perch, the treble hook is broken – one of the hooks was just bitten off. Later they told me it could have been a Bass or a turtle. Turns out they have turtles in the lakes here that are 40-50 cm. A bit later Oleg got a bite, he set the hook and that's it, Bass on the line. Very hard to bring in, the fish is strong and doesn't want to give up, it pulls hard from side to side, he brought it up to the boat and I hauled it into the boat. Half an hour later another one, but a little smaller. Result of the trip – 64 perch, 5 small catfish, 4 little pike, 5 Bass – Oleg took 2 big ones, Dima 2 smaller ones and Akber took one right at the pier when we got back from fishing. I caught the most perch and little pike, plus one crucian carp. I had 3 Bass bites – the first time it broke the hook, and the other two times apparently the Bass weren't very big and couldn't swallow the bait perch. They have quotas here on some fish species, for Bass, for example, you can only take 2 per person, plus some size limits on the fish. The biggest Bass was immediately cleaned and prepped by Volodya, the owner of the lake house, and into the oven it went. A great ending to a great fishing trip! Wait for the next report, Inshallah from the ocean this time. Ocean fishing hasn't started yet because the Mackerel are running late, so the predators that hunt mackerel, like Striper and Bluefish, haven't shown up yet... So we waaait...