I know, I know, it's Opening Day but the birds didn't seem to be flying and there was an invite on the phone to fish a new place, nice. You know the drill, put a couple of rods in the truck, head down the road to the country and have at it.
We found ourselves by a good sized pond, fed by a couple of small streams, and cast off in search of bass. Good call, before you could say "tight lines" they were biting in the shallows; fierce, voracious young fish and everyone was was catching, result.
After a while the bite died down and I swapped out a psychedelic green lure for worms. Lo and behold, up came several blue gill and a junior catfish, not shabby at all, and for a while it was every cast a fish. I love that, but it slowed down again and we were getting ready to call it a day when something big hit young C's blue, sparkly, rubber worm thing, fished deep. Turned out to be a serious catfish, easily the best catch of the day. Well done, young man!
So that was that, great fun. As we were driving back to my church friend's place, I learned that one of the families who settled the area back in the 1850s/60s(?) still lived on their land, which they most very sensibly hadn't sold off, ahem, word to the wise.
Wisdom aside, their original cabin is still in place, on a bluff, not so very far from where we were fishing. "Do not leave this cabin while I'm gone," said the patriarch to his wife or daughter. She did, and was scalped by Comanches, who were active in the county.
Imagine what it took to settle Texas. It was no small thing, and people from Europe and the UK, perhaps CONUS too, have this "Yee-Haw" comedy cowboy view of our state. Fair enough, cinematic PR has its place, but the reality's different. Those people were tough as nails and that's not gone; friendly with it, mind you.
Fish on,
LSP
