A Poor Day of Fishing
I ran into a friend of mine on the road the other morning. We had one of those movie scene gravel road conversations. You know, the ones where they block traffic in both directions so characters can talk about the weather, life, etc...
Anyways, during that road blocking conversation, my friend proposed a fishing trip for the next day. They alleged that the White Bass were running, and that we needed to go catch some. I accepted their offer for a Sunday afternoon adventure, and went about my Saturday. I worked, in case you were curious. The reduced number of employees discussed in my last post Hiring has me working too many Saturdays recently.
Sunday morning rolled around, I made biscuits, and sausage gravy for breakfast. A personal favorite of mine. I lazed around the house for a while then I gathered up my fishing gear, put it in truck, located my friend, and we headed off to the lake. It was a beautiful day. Temperatures were in the high 70s, with a slight breeze. Bluebird skies. A perfect day for fishing.
It must be stated that this is a lake that neither of us has been to before, so we were going in blind. Also, neither of us own a boat, so we are relegated to fishing from the bank. If you're an angler, you know that not all lakes are bank angler friendly. Sadly, we soon discovered that this was one of those non-bank angler friendly lakes.
This particular lake only has four public access points. The first two we visited were right across a bridge from one another. The first site was full of picnickers enjoying the weather, so we opted not to fish there. Down the road at the second site was the public boat ramp. A few people were fishing from the bank, but most of the area was covered in a morass of cattail stems that had lost lures written all over it. To add to the ambience of the space was the dilapidated outhouse style bathroom covered in graffiti with boards over the doors. The trash littering the ground and floating in the water was quite disheartening too. I guess with the lone trashcan bursting at the seams with garbage, the locals were out of trash disposal options.
On the plus side, my friend found a beaver chewed stick to take home. They were quite giddy with excitement with that discovery. Something about childhood and beaver sticks triggering happy memories. Due to the layout of the land and nastiness of the area, we opted not to fish in this space. We drove thirty-ish miles to the next public access point.
This area was a totally different animal. Immaculately manicured grass, trash cans every few feet, picnic tables, and multiple fishing docks. A great place to have a family picnic. Bonus! No one was there but us. We had the whole place to ourselves. We utilized the picnic tables to eat sandwiches and pretzel sticks lovingly provided by our spouses, and commenced fishing.
I'm not sure how long we were there, but it had to be close to an hour. Hopping docks, walking the bank fishing every inch of water we could reach. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero fish. Not even a nibble. I did snag an old fishing line in the water, but that was about as close as either of us came to catching anything. Nice place, but no fish. At least none that were biting what we were throwing out. As my stepfather would say, “that's why they call it fishing and not catching.” But he usually follows that line up with, “except when I go, they call it catching, because I catch all the fish.”
We decided to give the final public access point a try. We loaded the truck back up, and drove another thirty-ish miles to the next location. Another immaculately manicured locale. This one had people though. A few campers, an RV, an older couple rolling around on electric scooters, some swimming teenagers. Similar setup to the previous location, multiple little fishing docks, excellent trash can placement, a boat ramp, etc... However, the wind was blowing like mad on this side of the lake and the waves were rolling over the top of the little docks, so we decided to just call it a day.
We made the long drive back to the house, cooler empty of fish, but we learned much. We always read fishing reports and scope out a place on Google Maps or similar services before we go somewhere, but you never can tell until you get there in person. Despite the poor day of fishing, we had a good time. Our trip provided ample road time for conversation, which is always nice.
We have plans to go fishing again soon, but are going to a river we are familiar with. It has plenty of space for us bank anglers to try, and get at the fish.
Until next time.