Playing Hooky

Yesterday was my birthday. My loving daughter presented me with a rainbow Rooster Tail fishing lure, and my darling wife prepared Taco Bell for dinner. Well, except I had to drive us to Taco Bell, pay, and bring the food to the table. Other than that, though...

It being Thursday night, at least the boyz bought me my drinks.

Today, I had the urge to try out the aforementioned lure and the new reel that I got myself for my birthday. As luck would have it, all the meetings I normally have on Friday afternoons got canceled. As luck would also have it, yesterday Rico wanted to see the pond near my house that was rumored to have bass in it (rumored by me, on account of I've talked to fishermen there who claimed to have caught some), since we were eating lunch not to far from there.

We hadn't intended to eat lunch where we were. We had intended to go to Carl's Jr., which is one more exit south. But Rico got to talking about wanting to check out that pond, and I was telling him how to get to it, and Carl, Jr., was driving and listening (cuz he likes to fish, too), and he accidentally started following the directions and got off the highway at the exit for that pond, and not the one for Carl's Jr.

Carl is fairly easily flustered when he drives.

So we ate at the Arby's there, then went to check out the pond, which is formally named "North Frank Easement Pond at Frank State Wildlife Area," but I'll just call it "the pond." We saw lots of bluegill teaming along the periphery. Interesting, as my fambly had tried fishing that pond one before (our first fishing of this season) and gotten skunked. But we only fished for maybe 20 minutes that time.

For over a week, Carl, Jr., has been hauling around his fishing gear in his trunk in case we could sneak off ever, and I've been bringing mine since Monday. Well, we finally decided that today was the day.

So we grabbed a quick lunch and hit the pond. Early afternoon is a pretty lousy time to fish, but mostly I wanted to play with the new reel, so going at a lousy time means getting a lot of casting/reeling practice.

We fished for over an hour, trying one lure after another. We could see fish jumping here and there, and we could see schools of bluegill at various places, but just could not coax any bites.

Eventually, we started working our way around the perimeter of the lake. Carl, Jr. at some point switched to a bobber and a yellow, feathery jig (kinda like this one). About five minutes after that, he caught himself about a 7" fish. I was a couple hunnerd yards away, and he was yelling how it was some kinda fish he didn't recognize. When I got over there, he declared that he was pretty sure it was a largemouth bass. I checked my "Colorado species identification" guide that I always carry with me just in case I accidentally ever catch a carp again, and sure 'nuf, it was a largemouth.

I immediately dug out a bobber and a jig that looked almost identical, though mine was greenish yellow rather than canary yellow. We kept fishing and working along the shore back towards the car (had to be back to work in about 40 minutes), and I got my first strike of the day. This is more than an hour and a half from when we started.

It felt like something big, and it took a bit of line with it. I got to use the fancy rear-drag control on the new reel to increase the drag slowly as it tired, which made it extra fun. What I ended up with was a 15.25" largemouth. Carl, Jr. snapped this photo using my cellphone:


The minimum size limit at this pond is 15", so this guy squeaked in to being legal, but I threw him back anyways. The Mrs. and I are going out for dinner tonight, and Carl, Jr., and I were in our work clothes and had no decent place to put a fish. Though it was tempting, given we were only about 5 minutes from my house.