This year the fair is not only offering the usual funnel cakes, fried dough, corn dogs, candy apples, and cotton candy, but also providing fair goers the opportunity to feast on delicacies like lobster rolls, buffalo steak sandwiches, pad thai noodles, and jambalaya… This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg though, a complete lineup of all that the stands offer can be found here http://www.durhamfair.org/content/580/default.aspx.

Along with the food, they have numerous livestock shows and competitions, carnival rides, baking contests, concerts, tractor pulls, and even pig races some years. There are plenty of things to do to keep you occupied!

The only problem this year is that it is supposed to raining all weekend long. This still won’t keep me and my buddies from visiting the fair grounds and dawning our ponchos and umbrellas, afterall the Durham Fair only comes around once a year…

****UPDATE****

The Durham fair will definitely be held rain or shine this weekend and will NOT be cancelled because of the rain and wind according to a press released statement by Michelle LaPointe who is the Durham Fair Marketing Director.  Here a quote from her recent statement:

“Really not much changes for us. We still encourage people to come because we still have indoor events for them to attend,” LaPointe said.

LaPointe said the midway, entertainment and some offsite parking lots at the Durham Fair could be affected by the rain. She encourages people to stop out despite the rain. Umbrellas and other Durham Fair rain gear will be available for purchase at the event.

The way I see it, the rain will give a great chance for attendees to experience shorter lines at the fair!

Two weeks ago we were in the midst of a heatwave and there was not a cloud in the sky, but today the fog was so thick we only had about 20 feet of visibility when we launched the boat (see photos below). The last time we fished together all of our fish were found on structure and in shaded areas, but today there was not much to be found on structure or under docks (we went 1 for 6 on the fish we had hooked up).  I decided to fish the same weed beds that we fished last night with my parents and Erik, and it turned out to be a very good choice.

We immediately started catching fish off the grass.  After catching 4 or 5 smaller fish in a couple minutes, Brian got a strong hit and a nice bass came flipping out of the water. I put my pole down to give him a hand landing the fish.  This bass was strong and Brian could barely budge it in the weeds, he jumped 3 more times over the next 2 minutes and I finally got a hand on him and brought it into the boat. It weighed roughly 5lbs and was about 22.5 inches. We snapped a pic with Brian’s cell and released her to fight another day.

Check out that hog in the fog… (Click To Enlarge)

The fun didn’t stop there though.  Right after Brian caught that fish, the area lit up with bass busting on schools of bait all around us.  Everytime we cast to a school of baitfish we caught a bass sitting under them.  This went on for about 30 minutes, and it didn’t matter what we were throwing.  We got them on senkos (texas and wacky rigged), yozuri banana boats, and spinnerbaits. We landed about 20 keepers, including one smallmouth, and then they turned off just as quick as they turned on.

We fished until about 1130a and then a rain storm came through so we went back to my house to play some mariokart wii. We went back out around 230p and fished for another 90 minutes before a nasty super cell went over the lake dropping the temp 15 degrees and bringing torrential downpours prompting us to call it a night. We did manage another 8-10 fish before the rains came, but nothing overly note worthy, but i did catch a huge red eyed rockbass.

MEATY LITTLE GUY (Click to enlarge)

Despite the weather we had a great time, and its always fun spending some time on the water with friends (it sure beats working)… Looking forward to doing it again soon…

Conditions:

Foggy, rainy, windy, water temp 74 degrees