FINS AND TALES

March 19, 2015

Yucky day for sunbathing.  It  was about 34 degrees last night with cold misty rain.  Today is not much better.  The high turned out to be a cold, wet, 50 degrees but much colder in the morning with clouds and showers.

I got my combination license from Fast Eddie’s, and after tying up a couple of 1/64th oz yellow jigs, rigged one ultralight rod up with a float and size 10 mustad bait hook, and another with a float and one of the jigs. I then climbed into my 2000 F-150 and headed down the road to Mike Miller Park.

I began fishing the jig tipped with corn yellow trout dough next to the fountain cascading water 10 feet into the air.  After several missed strikes using a pause and slow retrieve, the last a flash of some merit from a decent fish, I rigged up the ultralight float and bait rig with a red worm and cast it into the vicinity allowing the weightless red worm to slowly sink its way about three feet below the bobber into the strike zone.  This immediately paid off with a hook up from a fiesty largemouth
bass of about 14 inches, which I landed and promptly released.

I rebaited and it didn’t take but about a minute before the bobber bounced and disappeared several times before I finally caught a four inch bluegill.  Again releasing and rebaiting, the bobber
dived sharply and I set the hook on a really scrappy trout.  This one I placed on my stringer hoping to add four more for my limit for the day, and a nice dinner for Sandy and I.  I caught 7 trout altogether, bringing the limit for trout home to be panfried on Friday night.

In about an hour and forty five minutes of fishing on a cold, dreary March day, I had caught 7 trout, keeping 5, missing several others,  2 bluegill, and 1 largemouth bass.  While dressing the trout, for the first time I realized that the first of the little fighters I had caught, and the heftiest on the stringer, was a brown and not a rainbow.  The park lake is stocked with rainbow, and I guess somehow the brown got into the mix.

After dressing the fish for the next days dinner, I curled up into my brown recliner in my office and
watched my St Louis Cardinals get pounded by the New York Mets in a game 7-2, that I had recorded earlier in the day.  The weather and ballgame didn’t cooperate, but those little rainbows at the park saved the day, and for me, signaled the beginning of a new fishing season.

Into every life it is said, a little rain must fall, but as life has taught me so many times over my 68 and 1/2 years, for those who are willing to endure the hardship and make the effort, often from even the cloudiest and most dreary days, a trout dinner can be won!

L-R, my beautiful granddaughters Emma Gracie, Mea Nathina, and Kayla Elizabeth Ragan.  Photo taken on a sunny day one week later at the park.  Kayla and Mea were already quite the fisherpersons, but included in the catch is Emma's first fish.


Keith

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