They're nice guys. Lonnie is from the same settlement I hail from and his son Mark arrived here on the prairie ocean on Tuesday, after flying in from Washington State.
Lonnie and Mark wanted to go trout fishing, so a fishin' we went.
The toughest part for me was my ignorance of bait fishing for trout. Of course I knew that Power Bait, salmon eggs, corn and a variety of other baits work, I really didn't know how to rig the baits. Scotty at the store was our salvation however, and after loading up on Power Bait, Power Worms, marshmallows, meal worms, and salmon eggs we were off to the river.
The river was still a little stained today, kind of a putrid green tea color. It wasn't off enough though to totally throw fishing out the window though. I think the biggest problem we had this morning was the fishing equipment on hand - rods too big, line too heavy and thick, and bobbers that were larger than a silver dollar.
Without any doubt, I saw Mark get a number of strikes, nibbles or whatever them there bait chunkers call them and it was almost undetectable because of the size of the bobber. However, we persevered and continued on.
It wasn't too long until Lonnie got into a quality fish using a marshmallow and meal worm combo.
The first half hour or so I stayed with Lonnie and Mark to make sure they were doing okay and once they were I decided to leave them there bait chunkers to their water and try to find some fish of my own.
My morning would start with tragedy however. The brown bugger, the Duke of Marabou Brown, became floundered on a limestone outcrop and the poor lad would give his life at sea. Attempt after attempt to roll him loose proved fruitless, so the tether that held his life was broken and a sailors prayer was given.
The tragedy would be more than I cared to bear. The smallish fish were very active on the surface keying on those damn miniature bugs, but, I ignored them. Tying on a prince nymph a trout came to hand and then come a cousin of the brown bugger and this chap found three more trout.
It was shortly after capturing several trout that the morning became somewhat freakish. Dark clouds rollled in, followed by thunder, and then the streaks of lightning showed prowess, then rain and finally there was... hail - a steady downpour of hail-stone about the size of peanuts.
Before the weather came on us, I got to watch a good number of them there bait chunkers and none were catching trout, but one was catching, or caught I should say, something else. At first it appeared he had a lunker trout. Once he got the fish up to the bank though we would all discover it was a common carp - a good size common carp. I'd left my net with them there bait chunkers on the far side and in using the net, (which was a little on the small size for this fish), the carp was knocked off the hook.
Wish Charlie could have seen the carp - the fish took chartreuse colored glo bait.
The weather sent me and them there bait chunkers to our schooners to wait it out. It probably wasn't forty minutes or so before the skies cleared and the sun came out. With the sun, a steady and aggravating north wind showed itself also.
After the skies cleared or maybe it was once the storm came through - the fishing died.
Overall, it was a nice day on the river with them there bait chunkers. Like I said, they are nice guys - very nice guys.
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