Iraq and Afghanistan Veteran’s Free Fishing Charters

[Sweetwater]

Tomorrow is the big day! Good luck to everyone and acknowledgements to Rich and everyone for doing this. Now go put those folks on big fish!

[2na]

What a fantastic event Rich! A great day. Our 1st trip we got -0-, but our 2nd charter was with Captain David Roy, his wife Michelle and son Nick (5) out of Attleboro. Captain Roy had returned home from Baghdad Thursday(!) and this was his 1st weekend home. His family had never been to Ptown (they are spending the week there), nor had he ever caught a striper. 2 keepers, largest a fat 32-33". A great way to spend the day. Thanks to our servicemen, and thanks to you Rich - can't overstate what a great event it was, and all the great people in attendance.

[fishonnelsons]

We had the event on Sunday - great weather, sunny, calm waters, went really really nice.

Ended up with 13 charter boat guys and 7 recreational boats who also volunteered, and took out a total of 175 people - approx. 65 vets and their spouses and kids. Had a morning trip and afternoon trips, and alot of fish were caught up to about 25 pounds, which the mates filleted and bagged.

We had a great breakfast for all, and an even better lunch - made possible by the numerous donations we received from people on this site and direct from area restaurants. Alot of the people actually came for the weekend, as some hotels gave 50% off discounts.

I will post some pictures, but need to downsize them and re-load the rest of them.

Bottom line - THANKS to all who made this possible, too many to mention, but 2na, who actually got on a boat to mate, and Saltfly who donated a custom fly rod and BillyBlanks and cb2fly donated flies, line and reel, Bill Davison who donated a 10 ft St Croix and slammer reel, and on and on. I hope to get a CD made of the event as our local TV station was there, and then I will distribute it out to all who helped pull this off.

The Vets and their families really had a great time and were very, very thankful for the entire event - it was a real nice time.