Here's La's White Perch. I asked her if the fish was fighting back as she was reeling in, or if it seemed like dead weight. She said she felt the line stretch out as the fish took the bait, but after that it was hard to tell if there was anything on the line at all. That small a fish would have probably been a better fight on light gear, but you don't really get to chose the fish you catch in the circumstances we were fishing under (chucking bait on a slack tide). Noe asked if we could eat this fish and make a gyotaku out of it - we kept it in a small bucket with frequent water changes so that if we did catch more, we could keep them all to eat, or we could let them go. Being the only willing subject, and not really being worth the effort to clean, print, clean, prepare, cook and eat (snack sized), we decided to let the fish go back to the bay. So when you look at the score card, what do you see? Beginner's luck, or Plain old good luck? I think it was beginner's luck (and save the "plain old good" luck for the next big Powerball Lottery).
Based on last week's carpocalypse, I figured going back to Lock 7 to fish on Saturday morning would be a surefire way to fill my stoke bank. The weather this week has been awesome - Fall temperatures and low humidity. Very comfortable for humans, but for cold blooded animals the lower temps slow things down. I saw five carp just hanging out in the canal - but they weren't interested in any of the flies I presented. I was looking for feeders grubbing around the bottom and I saw mudding plumes and bubble columns, but instead of feeding carp, I learned that turtles generate the same signs. This turtle was huge - hard to gain scale from the picture but it was about 24" in diameter. The heron in the picture did catch a fish. Just minutes before this picture it had caught and eaten a decent sized carp. Sometimes it's okay to not catch fish.
