People seem to actually like the fishing pictures, so here’s a few more chronicles of my exploits.
A week ago I tried fishing along the Colorado River below the longhorn dam. I used to see people fishing there all the time, but I haven’t seen anybody there for a while. It was just me and a crazy guy throwing rocks at turtles. So I shouldn’t have been surprised that I caught the tiniest, most pathetic series of bluegills I’ve ever seen.
After I caught this one, I actually cast the line several times with the fish still on it, hoping to catch a much larger fish with the smaller as bait.
A little farther afield, I explored the fishing ponds in the Travis County park system. For instance, the Southeast Metropolitan Park, which is conveniently located near the airport, has several ponds. When you enter the park, it looks like a giant, empty field.
But if you hike back beyond the parking lots, there’s some beautiful wild terrain with ponds hidden between the hills.
I didn’t catch any fish, but a swarm of bluegills stole a series of worms. A park attendant, who gave me a ride back to the parking lot at thrilling speeds on his ATV vehicle, gave me pointers on catching bass and catfish. He even showed me a pond that I had no idea was there, where supposedly the best bass can be found.
I didn’t see any bass, but I did glimpse a fox, which is a rare sight. I couldn’t snap a picture before it disappeared into the brush, but I did find its brother, who held very still for the camera indeed.
To the north, another Travis County park has a "neighborhood fishing" pond called Bullfrog Pond. It belongs to a program where the state routinely stocks catfish in the summer, and trout in the winter. It’s supposed to make fishing fun and easy, the more so because the pond is barely larger than a swimming pool.
Several old timers had their catfish lines in the water, but they didn’t have so much as a nibble. I started fishing for panfish, so I would have some sort of success, even if it was an under-achieving success. So I changed up my techniques. Although the sunfish had been biting at my line, their mouths were too small to actually fit around the hook. So I switched to a smaller hook, and cut the nightcrawlers into smaller, bite-sized pieces. With some patience and work, I managed to catch several unimpressive redear sunfish.
The redear sunfish are a favorite of stock ponds because they tend to grow particularly large, up into the three-pound range. But these examples still had a long way to go.
Fishing for panfish (or "perch" as they are inexplicably called in Texas) is a bit low-class, and it’s even more low-class when you do what I started doing, dangling the hook off the edge of the fishing pier.
And that’s when I hooked it.
I was expecting to jerk up another finger-sized redear, but as I looked down at my line, this massive maw breached the water. It was a little like a scene from Jaws, or maybe Dune. A fair-sized largemouth bass had taken my little sunny bait, but because I was using such a small hook, it shook itself off before I could haul it out of the water.
I cursed a little, changed the tackle back to a man-sized hook and worm, and within a minute I had re-caught the bass.
I like this shot better because I’m wearing a very serious fisherman look.
I would have eaten this fish, but the keeper limit is 14 inches, and this fish was 13 and a half. And I just couldn’t get it to stretch.
