Visited some friends this weekend in Sugarland and their son kept nagging me about going fishing. I kept saying it's too cold, too windy, no bait etc etc.. He finally convinced me to try out one of the ponds in his neighborhood. He said that he had caught a few small catfish there before. Let me just say that I really, really dislike fishing for catfish. I was already thinking about dodging footballs and duck poop when I finally agreed.
As soon as we walked up to this 'residential pond', replete with children's swings, domesticated ducks and kid's playing touch football, I saw this massive swirl at the edge of the pond among the cavorting waterfowl that was neither a turtle nor a duck. Then another swirl but this time I saw a large tail break water. Well this looks promising I thought to myself while side stepping a pile of duck poop.
I showed Darren how to rig up with the only thing he had (his mom's raw marinated kung-pao chicken breast strips) and we began to catch little yellow catfish. I never saw the cause of that big swirl again. Must have been a grass carp or something, or so I thought. Well, we ended the evening releasing about 6 of those little kitties and about 3 turtles. Not quite the 'pond slam' but all in all not too bad and it kept Darren off my back for while.
That night I kept thinking about that big swirl I saw and reliving it to try and analyse that snapshot in my mind of what fish that tail could have belonged to. The old hunter gatherer instinct in me really wanted to find out what it was. If there are small catfish, there's gotta be a momma somewhere right? Could that tail have belonged to her??
The next evening we went back to the pond again. Darren was all grins when he guessed what I was up to. We sat there catching turtles and small kitties and having a ball when some lady with her kids came by and started feeding the ducks. "Oh hell", I thought, there goes the fishing. Suddenly I saw that swirl again! And this time right in the middle of that waterfowl feeding frenzy! I immediately picked his line up and cast it right into the melée next to the submerged trampoline. Not 10 second passed when the rod was almost yanked into the water. I set the hook and passed the rod to him. Well, the rest of the story is in the pic. We released him to frolick with the ducks another day.
Moral of the story? Don't overlook these all-too-obvious little ponds and eat more Kung Pao Chicken. And no I won't tell you where that pond is!
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