A family tradition here at Casa Monkeywrangler, is on Mother's Day, the family takes me out fishing. We all love to fish, having the best time on our vacations back to Kansas, where we stay at a private church retreat belonging to our old church, with a 3ac pond that is full of fish.
This year however, the weather has not been cooperating. Too much rain to fish. Until that is, this week. It's been about 9 days now since it rained. So tonight the plan is to go fishing after it cools off a bit and gets closer to nightfall. In the small ponds where we fish, they tend to be more active early morning, and late evening. And since everyone has more fun when the fish are biting, not just the B-52 sized mosquitos, we are going in the evening.
Worms were procured at the local Big Box Mart, and promptly ensconced in the fridge so they did not expire in the heat (91*F at 5pm). After dinner it was time to go fishing! DH wasn't feeling well so he stayed home in the a/c. The Monkeys and I went down to the local park ponds and soon found a good spot.
This is our favorite pond to fish in. It has a more natural appearance than the north pond with its man-made rock edging. There are a few large bass in the ponds, some medium catfish, and a boatload of bluegill. There used to be warmouth in the ponds too, but we haven't seen them for a couple seasons now. I miss them, as they were bigger than the bluegill, and fought more than bass.
There are a lot of smart turtles in these ponds too. Smart in that they know what a bobber is, and that it means an easy meal just below it. Dumb in that they never seem to understand the free meal comes with a barbed hook in it. I ended up catching one fingerling bass, a good handful of bluegill of various sizes, and 3 medium turtles. All catches were released back into the pond, though one or two bluegill were destined to be turtle chow, as they were damaged during hook extraction.
It was a nice evening, with a breeze and few mosquitos (thanks to DEET). All of us made catches, so everyone was happy.
Sounds like a fun tradition. We often go hiking on mother's day.
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