I hooked a big one...

I went down tonight to renew an acquaintance with an old friend -- my pond. Haven't had a rod in my hands for about three weeks; we were busy with our "G&G Road Trip" to New York to see our new grandson. So since it was a nice cool evening, I thought this might be a great time.

With my very first cast with a minnow-like lure on 6# test, I caught a 12"/3# bass. One never knows if that means spending the rest of the evening being shut out, or if it was, indeed, going to be a great night of angling. Pam was in on the phone, so I didn't get a picture of this one, but trust me, the scratch and the teeth marks on my thumb will verify that I did catch one. OK -- So far, so good.

I whipped the water a little more, and then caught one that looked to be about 10". It was just a young one, but I was happy to catch it just the same. That was two in about a half hour.

Then I walked to another part of the pond and on the very first cast, I hooked a fish that hit like a big ol' catfish, because it stayed down for a while. But when it broke the surface, trying to throw the lure, I saw it was Walter II. It looked to be about 14" and 3-4#. As I said, I only have 6# test on this reel, so I had to be careful. But I got it in, grabbed it by the jaw and started yelling for Pam to bring the camera. There was a couple walking by on the road and they saw me haul it in, and the neighbor just happened to be riding by on her bike when I made a fatal error. I took my eyes off the fish and it started flopping around in my hand. I hadn't gotten the hooks out yet, when all of a sudden the fish buried one of the hooks in my index finger. It was in so deep that the hook almost disappeared. Plenty of blood. Well, I was telling Pam to hurry up and take the picture so I could get the hook out of the fish and then out of the fisherman. Good thing I had a tetanus shot in April.

Picture this -- me with a lure's treble hook buried deep in my left index finger, blood all over the place, trying to get the other set of hooks out of the fish's mouth. I was just thinking how I had really hooked a good one when, for some strange reason, I thought of it from the fish's point of view. It had really hooked a big one too -- ME. Good thing fish don't have cameras too.

Anyway, I was really pleased with three nice bass in an hour. What an evening.

"Bragging may not bring happiness, but no man having caught a large fish goes home through an alley." (Anonymous)

Hooah

Fish tales...

I spent some time the other day working around the pond, trimming the banks and clearing all the weeds out under the dock. Having finished that, I crawled into the hammock and started to think of what my next project should be. Fortunately, a cool breeze overcame me and taking a nap seemed like the most logical thing to do.

When I woke up, I thought about wetting a line because it had been a couple of weeks since I had the fly rod out and I thought the bluegills needed some work.

As I got the rods out, I couldn't help but think about the last time I was over at Lake Loramie with my old friend, Dave. It seems he used to be quite a fisherman (at least according to him), and he and his dad would come up to Loramie and camp and fish. So when I suggested to him we take a break from golfing and try our hand at fishing, he was all for it. Remember, this is the guy who went out and bought several hundred dollars worth of golfing gear before he even played his second round. So when he said he was going to have to buy some fishing gear, I wasn't surprised when he called and said he had spent over $50 on gear so we had better catch some fish.

Well, We got out at 0600 hours and it was an especially beautiful Friday morning. After getting the boat in the water, we started trolling around the lily pads near the docks and shoreline. To my surprise, we were greeted by a beaver who swam out to let us know we were casting a bit too close to his area. I have never seen a real beaver in the wild, and this was a thrill. He made a couple of passes, sizing us up I guess, and then smacked his tail on the water and returned to his part of the shoreline.

We spent the rest of the morning exploring the lake, hitting the best looking areas. We certainly gave it the old college try, but I don't think we would have impressed any real fishermen -- you know, the ones with those fiberglass, speckly-painted bass boats worth several thousand dollars complete with almost as many electronic gadgets as we had in Baghdad.

Anyhow, here are the pictures of our day. Pictures don't lie, so I'll let you decide how we did. Please be kind. The way Dave figures it, he is averaging $26.50 apiece for these two fish he caught. I think he might have been short changed on the little one. But as far as that goes, at least he got two fish in the boat. I couldn't set the hook and had at least three fish on the line, only to have them spit the hook. They could have been crappies, because they have very soft mouths and quite often are lost if you're touch isn't just right.

Of course, the "best catches of the day" can't be measured in money. We really had to fight to land these monsters.












“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” (Henry David Thoreau)

HOOAH

I could have been a rich guy...

I'm sure a great many of you have had an opportunity or two in your life to become rich. Sometimes we recognize how good a deal this proposal could turn out to be and reap vast amounts of cash. Other times we miss the boat.

Well, in the last month, I have had at least 10 opportunities to become one of the most rich and famous people in the country, or at least in this corner of Ohio. It seems that had I only believed in the generosity of the kind and loving people from Ireland, England and Pakistan, I could have raked in millions of British Pounds, Euros, Irish Pounds (or whatever they were paying off in) and several million whatevers from Pakistan. Imagine how fortunate I felt to find out that my e-mail address had been randomly chosen from all the e-mail addresses in the world for a British lottery, and all I had to do was supply certain bank details from my personal accounts to them to complete the transfer of the funds (I know which way the funds were going to be transferred!!) . All the others were pretty close to the same kind of operation. I would also have thought that such highly esteemed financial organizations (never did get the names of the companies, just a bunch of letters -- LLC, etc.) would have been able to write letters in correct English. Reminds me of the old saying, "I was certainly born in the dark, but it wasn't yesterday."

The one I really liked was the one "from" the Director of the FBI himself , who wanted to give me a fully paid credit card for $500,000 for helping him solve a particular problem he was having with foreign internet fraud artists. All I had to do to get the card was send him a $5,000 transaction fee which would be partially refunded in six months. I'll bet none of you have ever received a personally written note from the Director!!!

Oh well, I guess I wasn't fast enough, or didn't demonstrate my good faith to them, because I haven't gotten my 15th Final Notice of winning yet. Too bad!!

“The trouble isn't that there are too many fools, but that the lightning isn't distributed right.” (Mark Twain)

Hooah

Prelude to another road trip...

Well, technically I guess this isn't really a prelude since I'm writing it five days after the fact. And it wasn't just any old road trip either -- it was the first of our "Grandma/grandpa Road Trips." This was to be the first trip to see our grandson (two weeks old), but as excited as we were we were really concerned about Bailey's health and her being in the spa for 10 days.

This one was starting off pretty well though, because the owners of the"spa" (that's what we call the kennel so Bailey doesn't get too upset at not going with us) know how to take care of dogs with diabetes and don't charge any extra to give the insulin shots and do all the extra stuff that she would require.

It was after dinner, I was finishing the yard work and putting all of the patio stuff in the barn, when Pam told me she was taking Bailey to the spa. Bailey is always happy to be going for a ride and looked to be in good health, so I wasn't too worried about her at that point. However when Pam got back home, I knew everything was going to be good about this trip when I saw the sunset.

The next morning we were off and the first G&G Road Trip was underway...10 days of New York, seeing our son and daughter-in-law, and baby Quinn. Doesn't get much better than that, folks.

“The journey of a thousand miles starts with a fully functional GPS.”

Hooah