Fish Soldier's Bluff

Well. I didn't follow my own advice and watch Leprechaun, awesome though it is, and I didn't drink any Guinness, annoyingly. But I did go to Soldier's Bluff after Evening Prayer in search of fish.

It was a bust at first and I thought it'd stay that way. Then, as the bright sun started to go down, the fish started nibbling and then biting. Out came 5 Blue Gill and one small Bass in short order. Good result.

Apart from the excitement of catching the small but feisty fish, it was simply good to get out in the open air and enjoy the view of the lake from the bank. 

I gave my left over worms to some kids, I hope they caught something, and you can view excerpts from the adventure at, ahem, Incredible Video!

Fish on,

LSP

Prince is Dead, I Went Fishing

Prince has died. He was a Pop Star singer songwriter from the '80s and considered a super if eccentric talent. He may or may not have been a member of the Illuminati. Regardless, I celebrated Mass this evening and went fishing at Soldiers Bluff, at Lake Whitney. I guess soldiers used to watch over the mighty Brazos from the limestone bluffs, a century or so ago.

That was then, today Soldiers Bluff is a campsite surrounding a cove near the dam and it was flooded, thanks to Hillary's foreign policy and the settled science of climate change, or The Weather, which we're in a war with. Undeterred, I scouted the banks of this near inland sea and I have to say, the catfish were boiling in the shallow water.

Excited, I cast off with worms on a treble hook and was flummoxed when the cats didn't bite. There they were, juicy, tasty, fat Canadian worms and there they were, Catfish, in a bankside feeding frenzy. Hunh. The two should match but didn't, like Anglicanism and credal orthodoxy.

Who knows, maybe the hook was wrong and perhaps a bad workman blames his tools. Whatever, the treble was swapped out for a circle hook, the worms remained the same, and the fish started to bite. I caught a couple of Blue Gills and a Catfish, in a kind of competition with a Mexican gentleman who was bow fishing. 

He shot two Gar with an orange arrow, and warned me about a "real big snake" that was heading our way.

He was a good guy, that Mexican. 

Fish On,

LSP

Texas Floods, So You Fish

Texas is mostly underwater, which forces us to fish. I tried out the old chicken liver and night crawlers method today, all in the hope of getting a monster catfish.

That meant clambering over the bluffs looking down on lake Whitney, and dropping a Carolina rigged treble hook baited with liver onto a recently submerged limestone ledge. I'd seen two big Channel Cats grazing there, so my hopes were up.

OK, Not a Monster, But Still, A Fish.

I left the rod in its holder and waited for the liver to do its trick while I fished the topwater with lures. Sure enough, after about 10 minutes, down went the float, out played the line, and the rod bent with a vengeance. Big excitement, no doubt about it, and I dropped the one rod and scrambled for the other. Reel that fish in! And I did, or at least started to, then... nothing. Whatever it was dropped the bait. 

Fierce Little Thing

My guess is that a Gar hit the liver and ran with it but let go after discovering something was up, they do that. Nothing was biting after that, so I moved on to less adventurous water and was rewarded by a Catfish and a Sunfish.

Gratuitous Texan Sunset Over Lake Whitney

They hit worms on treble hooks in shallow water with the kind of zeal you'd expect from Bernie Sanders promoting the Communist Manifesto. Aggressive beasts, fish. And that, readers, is that, except that it isn't, because the challenge is still on for a big Cat.

Fish on,

LSP