The Return of Eric Joseph

It has been a while since I have written for you! Remember me?  There are a lot of you who are new, so I shall be introducing myself again. Well to start it off, my name is Eric Joseph I am from Dorchester, where I have lived for my entire life. I have attended  Madison Park Technical Vocational High School for two years. I am an avid lover of doing things outside, exploring, and fishing. And all three of those things are included in working here, so no wonder I like working here so much!

My prized 30 inch bass caught at Fan Pier

This year, just like last year I will be working as a JPA (Junior Program Assistant) and last year a lot of things happened such as my many many eventful days as at Blacks Creek and the Children's Museum and the fishing derby at fan pier where I caught a 30 inch Striped Bass, the biggest one caught that day.

Pirate Eric striking a pose with a fan.

I also did a lot of bonus work on breaks that were really fun, For example on April 21 I went to the Marine Mammal Safaris, where me and a few other people boarded a cruise ship and all looked for seals and porpoises but little did the people boarding the boat know that I would be dressed up as a pirate! So Pirate Eric would walk around the ship talking to the passengers while I also encouraged them to look for the sea animals. The people were amused by my performance and I had a lot of fun!                                                                                                                                                                







Here's to another great summer!

 ~Eric Joseph

My Big Bass Beast Bessie

Okay let me simply start this one saying this: WEDNESDAY HAS BEEN AN AWESOME DAY! Okay let me start from the beginning, so I came a bit before 8:00 because I was a bit confused on where to go. I ended up going to the Barking Crab by accident, I ended up getting to Fan Pier at around 7:43. When I got there I helped out by setting up the Save the Harbor/Save the Bay flag. And after a good hour of waiting for some kids to come fishing with us, we got started. Everyone got fishing partners and were put on boats. I ended up choosing Imani Dorsey as my fishing companion, and we ended up on a boat just for the two of us and our captain Basil Freddura. Basil's boat's name was the "Daze Off" but from how that day went on that boat I did, in no way, daze off. On the boat we learned that Basil is the head chef of a restaurant called The Daily Catch so he already had a lot of squid chum for getting mackerels. Basil even gave me a five hooked fishing rod, so we ended up catching at least 30 mackerels. I even unhooked some of the mackerels! After that we drove around a bit to a new location and went fishing using the live mackerels as bait to catch bass so I put on my clicker and got comfortable. A good 10 to 15 minutes in and my clicker going crazy so Basil runs over and instructs me to go and pull up to make sure the hook goes into the fishes mouth and reel in. after a good minute or so I caught a striped bass! But this one was 24 inches so I had throw it back in the water. After that we moved a bit to a new spot, and after a good 45 my rod went mad! So I did what Basil told me before and tugged the rod up to hook the bass and reeled in, in a pattern and after a long fight with that fish Basil and I pulled up Bessie!

Me with my fish named Bessie!

Bessie is a 30 inch striped bass that gave me some cuts on my left hand. Bessie was also the only striped bass to make it back to the dock. Bessie was a star on the dock too so many people were petting the fish, congratulating me and wanting to take pictures with Bessie. And even a journalist came and asked me some questions and Bessie and I got on to the news in the Boston globe! At the end I was given an option: let Bessie be filleted or let her be frozen for fish printing. And because I wanted to be able to see Bessie again I chose for her to be frozen for fish printing.

That was the biggest catch I've had ever!
~Eric Joseph