Fishing with Courtney Ball

I've got an interesting story for you.

So there I was, sitting around one summer day and checking TikTok for likes, comments, and new followers.  I had posted a video recently and a gentleman made a comment that read something like, "If you're ever looking for someone to join you in your boat at Watkins Mill, let me know."  I said something to the effect of, "That sounds good.  We should do that."  To make a long story short, we actually ended up setting up a time to meet up and fish together.  Spoiler alert: neither of us were serial killers and we had a lot more in common than you might think.

Going back a little, I found out that the fella's name was Courtney Ball.  As fate would have it, he works in public education just like me.  We also don't live very farm from one another.  On top of that, we share a lot of similar views on life, religion, and education.  If you're picking up that Mr. Ball and I hit it off quickly, you would be right.

Over the course of the morning, we put a few fish in the boat.  We caught hybrid striped bass on chicken livers and panfish on flies.  We didn't catch anything big and sometimes the fishing was slow, but we caught fish.  We also shared a lot of laughs and swapped a lot of stories.  One funny thing that happened during the morning was that each of us received a message from someone that was making sure that one of us had not been murdered by the other one.  We each got a pretty good laugh out of that!  By the end of the morning I realized that I would share a boat with this guy again without any hesitation.

I'm not saying that everyone should meet a stranger on social media and go fishing with that person.  What I AM saying is that it sure if fun to share the water with someone that has the same passion.  Sure, it was a leap of faith to go fishing with a complete stranger and yes, I was a little anxious about how things were going to go that morning.  However, when you bring some anglers together that love the outdoors and get a kick out of putting fish in the boat, you're almost guaranteed to have some fun!