Movement, says the Philosopher, is a sign of life and that in mind I loaded a couple of rods in the rig and moved off to the lake. Yes, I was alive, but what about the fish? Good question. Soldier's Bluff, once a reef in a vast inland sea, shone under a fierce Texan sun, teenagers did backflips into hot water, all was alive, but the fish weren't moving.
Don't get me wrong, I tried, with worms and shad but no, our piscine enemy were lying low, immobile, playing dead. So much for this game of soldiers, I thought grimly to myself, and moved to another location, across the dam.
Boom, right out of the gate a ferocious Drum pulled rod #2 along the fishing pier. Off I ran, alive, picked up the rod and reeled him in. Good fight, well done fish. He went back, living, to fight again another day. Next up, Gar.
The thing about Gar, if you're me, is they're easy to get on but hard to hook. You see, they'll play with your bait and drop it if you attempt a premature hookset, which tends not to work because of the bony toughness of their long prehistoric beaks. So what to do?
Try a small #6 hook, baited with frozen shad, on a 12" leader weighted with split shot beneath a small float. If you're smart, unlike me, make that leader steel. Launch the shad near the Gar, he'll see it, move in and it.
Watch the Pleistocene creature gobble that bait fish down; seriously, let the fish do its thing, give it line, allow it to pretty much eat the shad and then run with it. It'll run, allow some 8 seconds into this then set that hook.
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Wow. Stand up, rod double, line out, leaping, thrashing, diving, running fish action. Just a lot of fun. But word to the wise. I say again, if you're fishing from some kind of pier use a steel leader, otherwise the fish will bite through your line as you haul him up, which is what happened to me today. Still, good fight, great result, thank you fish.
Back at the Compound we're reflecting on this real-life parable. It's the Feast of SS. Peter & Paul, who followed Christ and became fishers of men.
Tight lines,
LSP
