Today, Zack and I went back out to the canals, this time with less then spectacular results.
I got there maybe 20 minutes before Zack, and baited up well, plenty of corn, set up two rods, one on the float, and one my traditional bottom set up.
For about 20 minutes, I had nothing at all. But Zack's goose followed me down the bank. I was in a long-sleeve shirt today, the new Lone Star Carp Brigade shirt, and I think the goose mistook me for Zack!
It waddled up to me real fast, then when it got close it suddenly stopped. The goose stared at me...blinked...then lowered it's head, and did the waddle-charge, clearly angered by the fact that I was not Zack!
So I prodded it back with my shoe, getting a few beak-marks in the process, then sat on the little wall waiting for a fish, or Zack.
I waited for awhile, then Zack showed up carrying nothing at all but his single float rod. I told him where I'd baited. He got his float out, and then set about trying to wrangle back the goose.
He walked down shore a little ways, and I said, you know you're going to get a fish while you walk off, right? It was half joking, of course, but soon I was following him.
The goose spotted Zack, and Zack spotted the goose. Zack sat down to see if he could coax it over for pictures, since I had my camera this time. As soon as the goose came over to him, it started biting his sleeve again...
And then someone's drag started screaming. I yelled, FISH! Then I ran back to our gear, trying to figure out who's drag was yelling at us. A quick glance told me it wasn't my rods, so I yelled for Zack.
He was already on his way back, Goose pattering after him. Zack grabbed his rod and yanked up on it, and was into a fish.
In Typical Zack fashion, I'd been fishing almost half an hour with nothing, and Zack shows up and gets into a fish in 5 minutes.
Nice.
We could tell right away this was not the nice, hefty fish we'd been getting last time. It Zack only a short while to get the fish near shore, and it made a few quick runs but nothing too spectacular. I brought Zack the net, and he tried to net it...
...Only to find that his float rod was a little too long for my short-handled net. He tried in vain to scoop up the fish, but the net was never quite long enough, and the fish just kept swimming away just beyond his range.
After laughing at him for a little while, I took over netting duties, and Zack walked back a bit, easing the fish closer to shore where I quickly scooped him up.
Once out of the water we could see he was dissapointingly small. Yeah, a carp is a carp, but after twn near 10's, and a 14.5 of spectacular beauty, we had hoped for more.
Oh well. Here's Zack with his un-weighed fish. You can tell it's not quite what we expected by his goofy look...Ok, so Zack always looks goofy.
That fish turned out to be our only carp of the day. So the lower swim wasn't quite as great as we'd hoped, but we will be back to fish a longer session when we get a chance.
Anyway, after we let Zack's fish go, Zack got his line back out, then set about the art of Goose Wrangling.
To our idiotic glee, we found the goose was more then willing to repeat it's antics, so this time, we were able to get photos of it!
The rest of the day was mostly spent playing with the goose, since the fish didn't cooperate, so from now on, I'll mostly just be posting pictures, and captions.
The Approach! The Goose eyeballs Zack...
...And decides to give him some love bites!
Zack, perhaps fearing my teasing about the Bird Flu, pulls his sleeve over his hand and lets the goose bite that instead.
The Goose decides to get serious, and jumps back up on Zack's back.
Most of the time it just stood calmly on Zack's back, apparently in a trance of Zack-Love. Yes, it's as wrong as it sounds.
Now and then it would move around, or decide to flap it's wings like a crazy bird.
...Or hump Zack's arm.
Actually, I think it was just preparing to attack Zack's hair. I'm out of picture room, so this will be continued in the next post!
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