Monday, July 12, 2021

Fish And Fossil

 


"Dad, can we go fishing?" I thought for a moment, for maybe a second, "Yes, we can." Some coffee, two bacon and egg sandwiches and a relined rod later we were on our way to the lake, Lake Whitney. And after a brief pit stop at a lakeside Pick 'n Steal for fried cherry pie and a fishing license for the kid, we were at Soldiers Bluff, casting off.

Would the fish be on? Sure enough they were, right from the get go, with voracious predator perch going at the worms we were throwing into the murky, minnowed water. Tug, snap, light rod down and boom, out comes a fish. The soldier caught first, nice, and I came in not far behind.




And so passed a pleasant hour or so in the Texan sun on the side of the lake, what a lot of fun, especially given a late bite in the last half hour; fish after fish till you started to lose count. Some of them were big too, but all Bluegill. Come on, Bass, get your act together.

As we clambered up the rocks to get to the rig and home, I reminded the world that this was once the bed of a primeval, Mesozoic sea and there were fossils to be found. Sure enough, there was a junior ammonite and some petrified shells, easy to dig out of the clayish strata.




Then, "Look at this!" Lo and behold, there was a section of fossilized shell, sticking out of the rock. Pretty cool, so we went back to the truck to get some tools to excavate it. 

Some well placed taps with the hammer end of an old axe on a sturdy screwdriver and there it was, freed from the rock. "What if there's more?" We tapped away, removing the stone which had once been mud, and there it was, the fossilized spiral of an ancient crustacean.




Great excitement, and the fossil's back at the Compound. The Bluegill, on the other hand, were put back to fight again another day, and maybe to keep. Tasty.

Fish On,

LSP.

16 comments:

RHT447 said...

The young trooper will tell his grandchildren of this day. May you both have many more.

drjim said...

Sounds like Gen-You-Ine quality time there, Parson!

We're waiting for the grandson to get a bit older. There's a license free (say waht?) place here in town we can take kids to for some pond fishing.

I hope he enjoys it, because it's on the "Grandpa's Bucket List" of things to do....

Wild, wild west said...

A white sport coat,
And a fossilized crustacean....

(sorry)

LL said...

It looks like a nautilus.

Jules said...

Well, the excitement of fishing never ends!

SgtBob said...

LSP: If your son is interested in fossils, creek beds on Fort Hood are littered with the things. I have what I think is a fossilized bone, a shark's tooth and a fossilized sand dollar, found in a gravel bed creek. In the late 1980s, though, post authorities made digging illegal, unless approved by the post archaeologist, and removal of surface finds also illegal. Durned authorities.

Well Seasoned Fool said...

Envy.

Old NFO said...

Nice find! Yes, this whole area was ocean, back in the day...

LSP said...

Thanks, RHT, I appreciate that. And for sure, we had a lot of fun!

LSP said...

That sounds like a great plan, drjim. And "free" is a very good thing.

LSP said...

WWW, I laughed!

LSP said...

Good call, LL. We were surprised to find it, great excitement in the paleo excavation brigade.

LSP said...

Juliette, it just keeps on giving. Great result.

Love the pic of HALO on VM, such Wolf!

LSP said...

I'll pass that on, Sgt. Nice one.

LSP said...

Just a lot of fun, WSF. Of course it's better when the fish are biting.

LSP said...

I look at the stone, NFO, and it's clearly been churned by cataclysmic upheaval. How did life bounce back from that? It's happened a few times, apparently, not least the end of the last ice age and the extinction of megafauna and more besides. Interesting.