Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Gone Fishing, again...

I have been absent from my little updates here for a while. Shell has new internet policies, so I don't do a lot of computer playing at work anymore. Then, I tried to write up an essay about patriotism for the fourth, and the internet went out on me all together, so I bagged the idea. That brings me to "the here and now."
There is a ton of stuff going on this summer, not the least of which is my littlest sister's wedding. They are having two receptions, but one of them will be at my parents' house, so my dad is going crazy with projects he wants to finish before all of those folks come over. He bought a bunch of flagstone to build a kind of porch in his backyard - it's really freaking cool, I ought to take a picture! Anyway, my point is coming up, he bought the stone from the famous quarry town of Oakley, ID. Aside from the stone sales shops, there isn't really much to Oakley, it's just a great little town, a little way off of the beaten path. However, they do have a beautiful reservoir there that is well stocked with walleye, a fish that neither dad or I had ever caught. So, when dad decided to go get his last load of flagstone, he hitched up his little boat, threw Tommy and I in the big green truck, and set off at a steady lope for our first try at walleye. It was really windy when we got to the reservoir, but we stuck it out and managed to catch not only our first walleye, but our first several! Each of us hooked and landed several little fish, and each hooked into a nice little native trout - although I released mine a tad earlier than the others, it counts for a hooked fish anyway. We didn't keep any walleye, but I did let Tommy keep his nice little rainbow, and taught him to clean a trout for the first time. It was a great day, even though dad and I got way too much sun, and I can't wait to repeat it. Here are a few pics, for laughs.
This is my monster walleye. As per usual, I caught the small fish of the day. Also "par for the course," dad caught the biggest - it was the first walleye and I didn't think fast enough to get a picture.
Here is Tommy's second walleye. Again, I was too excited when he brought up the first one, and didn't get a picture of it. These things didn't fight at all. We guessed that they were probably recent planters, and hoped that we could get a little fight out of some bigger ones. Unfortunately, the bigger ones never came. This one was a fair representation of what we caught all morning long, and they were almost as limp on the line as a chub.


Here the little guy is showing off his freshly cleaned rainbow. He was really tired when we finally got home that night, and I couldn't convince him to try barbequed trout with me. Maybe another time!
He didn't make it far into the drive home. Totally tuckered out!
Thanks for looking. I hope everyone is having a great summer. I will be after coyotes in Wyoming during my next two week "hitch." Hopefully I'll have something new to add here!

1 comment:

Heidi said...

that sure is a cute kid you have there!! He must take after you.