Something other that Chads, Bushes and Gores!

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I have this pond. It winds around the house and up ravines. Size is unknown. It is probably 3 a or more, probably more. It is 16 ft deep at the dam and about 8 ft deep near the source but has some shallow areas for breeding. More than half is surrounded by forest to the waterline. We are at the top of the drainage, so the only water comes from rain on our property or from springs. I stocked it 17 y ago with largemouth bass, channel cat, bluegill and various minnows. It is an established breeding population for all of these. It hasn't been fished in 10 years. There are some channel cat in there that frighten me so I don't fish for them. On a warm summer night you can watch them feed and get some idea of the source of the Loch Ness Monster stories.

Went out this morning for fun. Used a lazer tail jig, Texas rigged, on a barbless hook. About the third cast, I hooked this bass. Took me, nearly 40 minutes to get him into the canoe. He measured about 30 inches from the snout to the center of the tail indentation [that is the way we westerners measure fish]. Didn't weigh the fish, just released him.

Makes me sorry for all of the years that I spent trout fishing. Biggest one that I caught was a 26 3/4 inch brown. This fish would have eaten him for lunch.

What have you been doing?

Best wishes,,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), November 19, 2000

Answers

Sounds like a great place Z. What other wildlife do you have?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), November 19, 2000.

I got a blowjob this morning and had some eggs.

-- What I did this summer (me@myself.I), November 19, 2000.

Lars:

The plan is to start at least two more ponds this year. Would have done it earlier, but just not much time. I intend to separate fish types betwixt them. The front has these seeping springs that run at 4C until August. I know some people who have developed rainbow that can survive warmer weather. They want me to try them. The other one will drain into the present pond and this prevents me from being to creative.

Other wildlife. The normal stuff. Quail, pheasants, woodcock, squirrels, groundhogs, deer, fox /coyotes, deer, turkies, deer [notice how I repeat that; we have both whitetail and mule here]. We have bear moving into the area and they have just confirmed cougars. Geese and ducks coming out of your ears. Just the normal stuff, although some of the web sites say we also have bigfoot :^) More songbirds than the east or the west [we are in the transition zone between eastern and western species, so we have both. We are up to our ears in Falcons [endangered elsewhere]. I have probably left off a lot. Oh, when the bison escape from the farm to our north [happens since they walk through fences] we also have those.

Best wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), November 19, 2000.


Lars:

Getting old and I forgot. One of the things that has held up the front pond for 17 years is the fact that our property is a civil war battle site. West of the Mississippi, these thing were not so clean. There are places where we have chosen not to dig. You can still see bullet holes in trees and on tombstones in the adjoining burial plot, where Confererates are buried. We can still see the wagon ruts where the Union Army moved in for the battle. Does make you think about history. I guess that we will need to bite the bullet and try. We will see what we will see.

By the way, I forgot beavers [which are a pain in the ass] and otters [which aren't so far].

Best wishes,,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), November 19, 2000.


I also caught a cockroach in a Roach Motel sometime last week.

-- I can talk to the animals (ants@bugs.spiders), November 19, 2000.


I crawled out of my cardboard box, took a piss on the front seat of some bastard's Ford Ranger, and then took a bath in his pond. On my way out, I raided his garbage cans for something to eat. He still thinks it's the racoons.

-- joe six pack (a day @ in. the life), November 19, 2000.

I did my laundry today. The only wildlife I saw were several spiders who've taken up residence behind the water heater. I let them be. While I was ironing my shirts, one of the adult neighbors came over to borrow my hose. Her grandkids had flushed several rolls of tp down the toilet, and some of it was still lodged in the sewer. I finished my last shirt, and then went over to help her slide the hose into the sewer access pipe. Fortunately, the pressure from the water was enough to break loose the clog, else she would've had at least an $80 plumbing bill.

I spent the rest of the day snoozing on the couch and watching golf.

Now, did you really want to know all that?

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), November 19, 2000.


kb8um8:

As opposed to the endless nonsense about what may have or may not have happened [or may or not be happening in Florida]:

Sure thing; your toilet paper story is a breath of fresh air. Now for something even more interesting, what did you outside of your home; or what do you plan to do; by-the-by, did you ever find your cat; that is something that I can relate to.

Best Wishes,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), November 19, 2000.


Nope. The cat's still gone. I adoped another: a 4-yo Siamese mix from the shelter, so he'll have a girlfriend if he ever comes back, albeit one who can't breed. Thanks for asking.

I liked your description of the monster channel cats. Sometimes I see them spawning in the spring in the shallows on the Maumee River. Wish that they weren't so darn full of bones -- one would provide some great dinners for a week!

Go read some Anne Dillard if you're hard up for ordinary/extraordinary prose. I have a soft spot for "Pilgram at Tinker Creek," but I have to be in a very relaxed mood to read it, since she can rattle on for pages in lengthly cumulative sentences about spider's webs and copperheads.

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), November 19, 2000.


PILGRIM! Geez. I should go to bed.

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), November 19, 2000.


It won't take but a few bass that size to clean out what's left in your pond. What's scary bout channel cats? Tastier than bass to me.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), November 19, 2000.

Carlos:

You need to move to the mid-west: I caught 15 over 2 lbs. Of course I put them back. That was on 30 casts. They are wall to wall. You just haven't been going to the right places.

Best wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), November 19, 2000.


Carlos:

By-the-by, it is an exprience thing. I grew-up in the Ohio valley in the 50's. It was polluted. No one, and I mean no one, ate catfish. Now, I have these suckers that are at least as big as turkies and probably as big as small hogs. Eat them; no way. It would like asking a Jewish person to eat pork.

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), November 19, 2000.


Z,

If ya want to thin them out but don't want them to go to waste freez'em and send'em out here,I can promise they will be eaten with mucho care : )

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), November 19, 2000.


LOL, that's quite a "fish story"! Z goes out into his pond and catches a record size largemouth bass. Hee heee haaaww haaw!! A real knee-slapper!

-- (some@beer.goggles), November 19, 2000.


Some:

You must live in a pitiful state if a 30 in bass is a record. Hell, the record here, would eat it, and if you go to the South, their record would eat our record.

Get out a little.

Best wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), November 19, 2000.


Z, you're "stretching" the truth again! We'll forgive you this time since it's just a "fish story", but please, could you watch those "exaggerations"?

-- LOL (Z@pathological.liar), November 19, 2000.

kb8,

I love Annie Dillard's "Teaching a Stone to Talk", & she wrote a passage about a moth in "Holy the Firm" which is nothing short of transcendent.

Z,

Before dusk I watched as a melting ruby orb slipped down behind the water's horizon. Several long ropes of pelicans, some resembling unclasped strands of knotted pearls, flew south to their evening roosts on the offshore islands. Reports of dolphins came in today - it was too dark to see them by the time I was out there & the sun had been demanding most of my attention, anyway.

I made a very good pot of soup today & fed kitchen scraps to the redworms. Almost had my fill of boletus edulis by now...

-- flora (***@__._), November 20, 2000.


I take it that was mushroom soup??

-- (raven@never.more), November 20, 2000.

flora--

I don't see many pelican--is it true that their mouth can hold more than their belly can?

Actually, I had a borderline-epiphany moment in FL while watching a file of pelican surfing the billow of air that is carried by a breaking wave. I *almost* saw something. It was as if they were sailing an unseen line thru chaos. I was moved to attempt a poem but it never got past the awkward, overreaching phase.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), November 20, 2000.


Flora, an English prof read "Transmigration in a Candle Flame" (aka Dillard's moth piece) to us in my last lit class. That was my first exposure to Dillard. At first, I dismissed her as a Thomas Pynchon wanna-be (Yes, Pynchon wrote some nature description, although he's better known for his fiction). Then, a woman I was dating at the time read me some of Dillard's unpublished works, and I took another look and developed a greater appreciation for some of her writing. I mean, some of her sentence just fall flat, but when they work, they're pure poetry, like the spider web behind the toilet and my mind just lost the exact quote.

Anyway, it is cold and snowy in Columbus this morning. I'm taking an early lunch, one that will allow me to leave this building in search of mushroom soup. I doubt that I'll find any as good as you've made.

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), November 20, 2000.


kb8,

Your mentioning of the spiders jogged my memory more than her name did. As I recall, she warmed into that passage by describing the spider in her bathroom, casting its mummies to the floor {- it's been awhile}.

I have a feeling that you'd like the 'Stone' book. I believe it's divided into four different pieces; it's a short collection of 'expeditions & encounters' {- more testosterone appeal }.

Here's the page for it at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060915412/qid=974737526/sr=1- 19/106-0671701-0266010

raven,

The funny thing is that I can usually make it to February before waving a white hanky & declaring 'no mas, no mas!'. Part of me just wants to burrow in & hibernate now. There are places in the bowels of the redwood groves where the lady bugs come to overwinter en masse. I usually make a pilgrimage in January, but am unable to resist going soon.

Lars,

I think you are still working on it {never say never, eh?}.

Here's a poem by Mary Oliver which I think you may like, Lars. Some of you have already seen it...

Wild Geese

~

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

~

- by Mary Oliver

-- flora (***@__._), November 20, 2000.


Nice choice, Flora!

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), November 20, 2000.

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