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Post by woodeye on Sept 19, 2022 11:10:31 GMT -6
Good video! That guy will probably use a shield of some sort on his next attempt to use a leaf blower to clean out a dinosaur track...
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 19, 2022 21:28:18 GMT -6
I watched the video with my six year old. He was pretty excited about it being in Texas. Thanks for posting it.
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Post by woodeye on Oct 10, 2022 11:18:46 GMT -6
While I was down on my old place getting material for the Iron Curtain©® this morning, I snapped a couple of pictures of my old stomping grounds which are only a little ways from my present stomping grounds.
This is a photo of the pond I had built in 1989, it's a good place to catch crappie, bass, and perch, but the channel cats must have lockjaw.
This is a photo of a big Cactus that is growing in the area, it looks pretty ragged, not sure what happened to it this year.
Aerial photo of the pond.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Oct 10, 2022 15:52:40 GMT -6
Thanks for the photos, woodeye. My guess is that some of that brown on the cactus is from freeze damage. That’s what happened to some of our cactus around here. That pond looks beautiful. My mom has a pond on her property, and yours reminds me of hers with the catttails and the pier. We used to love to catch bluegill there. There were often bass, but we rarely caught them. Get ready for a fish story now. Once when I was probably a tween or teen, a friend of mine and I were fishing together. We had to have been old enough to be down there unsupervised because there were no adults. We had some good fishing that morning, and I actually caught my first (and only, I think) bass that day. I was reeling it in, and when I got it out of the water, my line snapped. I had a little red and white bobber on the line, and I could see the bobber in the water as the fish swam away. I jumped right in the water, swam after it, and caught the bobber and the fish. My mother still has a photo of me with that fish, I think. It wasn’t huge, but it was quite an accomplishment for me.
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Post by woodeye on Oct 10, 2022 19:23:52 GMT -6
That is a great fish story, chrysanthemum . I'd be proud to have that one to tell, my personal fishing stories are very boring in comparison. Since I already know about the determination which you possess, it's not surprising that you bailed in after the bobber & fish.
It's possible that the cactus froze like that. I hadn't noticed it before, but it could have happened in February 2021 when it got down to -12°F or so.
The pond in the photo is spring fed, it's almost always clear. August was always the best month to catch crappie. On the west side of the pond, there was a huge post oak tree hanging out over the pond, so before the pond filled up in 1990, I used a chainsaw and cut the post oak tree down and let it fall into the area that would become the pond. That sunken post oak is where the crappie congregate, but you have to be in a boat to fish right over the tree. The pond is 20 feet deep, and in most places the sides are almost straight down. Even when the pond gets low, there isn't enough bank to walk around and fish...
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Post by hmoosek on Oct 10, 2022 20:07:32 GMT -6
Cool Fish story chrysanthemum! I got one! I got one! There was a smallish lake outside of our town. I don’t know how many acres it covered, but probably a little more than 15 or so. There was a family that lived right on the lake and They had a pier. They had a box next to the mailbox where you could put your 2 dollars and they would let you fish off their pier. Me and my best friend fished there often! One afternoon we decided to ride our bikes out there to fish. We were catching bluegills left and right. All of a sudden, my buddy pulled in this catfish and just as it cleared the water the line broke. My buddy was going to jump in, but I grabbed him by the back of his collar and we both stumbled around the dock, but at least we didn’t fall in. I remember that day just like it was yesterday and we were probably in 7th grade or so. We hauled home 39 bluegill and were sick up cleaning them by the time we finished! My Brother asked me where we caught that many fish. I think he had come home for a visit as he was already married. We took him out there the next day and had a blast catching fish. Since he had a old truck, we found where a creek crosses a dirt road and found a free place to fish in the same lake. I don’t remember how many we caught that weekend, but man we had us a great time!
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Post by macmex on Oct 11, 2022 5:56:43 GMT -6
Great story! We have a small pond with sunfish and bass. Some years ago we had some friends with a small boy who wanted to fish for the first time. Jerreth helped him to hook a bass and, as happened to you, the line snapped. The bobber remained connected. Fortunately, we had a canoe. So we ended up launching the canoe to run down that fish. I think we have a picture somewhere of that young angler with his fish. At the time I thought, "We worked harder for that fish than he did."
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Oct 11, 2022 8:57:07 GMT -6
Woodeye,
What a beautiful pond you have there! Lovin' these fish stories too!
I've got a good one for you guys from way back.
We used to work with a guy on the old GRDA Powerhouse, Unit One, who would tell us some real humdingers; all the while, swearing every word of every story was the gospel truth.
Enter, Joe Friday, and some Dragnet theme music ... ♪ ♫ ♪ Dum, De, Dum, Dum ♪ ♫ ♪ ♪... The story you are about to hear is true ... The names have been changed to protect the guilty.
His name was John. He said he and a buddy of his had been diving down at the base of Fort Gibson dam back in the late '70s, where they saw a catfish so big it could eat a man whole! He said after they went diving down there, they came back to fish that spot at night. John said every time they got a bite, the fish would break their line before they got it reeled in. Nothing would hold, even though they used the heaviest line they had, which was a 100 lb test line from a bowfishing rig; it still broke before they could get the fish to the bank. So, they went back home and rigged up a homemade treble hook by welding three hay hooks together and used a hacksaw to cut and form the barb at the end of each hook point. They attached the homemade treble hook to a 1/8" inch aircraft cable and baited it with a whole chicken.
It was so heavy that they had to use a boat to float the hook out to where they wanted it to lay that night and dropped it off at the end of the point. Then, they rowed their boat back to shore and attached the other end of their cable to a big oak tree.
He said the next morning when they came back, the line was stretched so taut that they couldn't even pull slack in it, much less begin to haul that fish back to the bank, so they had to drive their truck back into town to hire a wrecker. When the wrecker man got there, he clamped their line onto his tow cable and used the winch on his truck to bring the fish back in. He said when they finally got it towed to shore, they saw that it was a catfish that weighed 400-pounds and had eyes as big as cheeseburgers!
That story was told on a Friday afternoon, so we didn't see one another again until Monday morning next. When we came back to work on Monday, our foreman, Bill, said, "John, I've got a fishin' story to tell you today at lunch."
John was now "hooked' metaphorically speaking, as were we all. We were anxious to hear what it was that Bill had to say to John that day at noon. Bill was a good storyteller; one of the best.
It was a chilly Autumn day, and we all ate quickly, so we could hear this tale of his. Knowing Bill, it would be an epic saga. When we had all eaten our sandwiches, Bill poured himself an inviting, cup of hot coffee, took a deep seat, and got a faraway look ... Bill had an early onset of silvery-gray hair, He gazed at the Fall skies with his light blue, almost 'glassy' eyes. He rolled the hot cup of coffee between his open palms for warmth, then, sat it back down on an old, weather-worn, wooden wire spool and said, "JOHN! I went down there this weekend to check out that fishin' hole you've been tellin' us all about..."
John snapped to attention in anticipation of Bill's tale!
Bill reached out to touch his coffee cup again, this time, just with the tips of his fingers, turning it one way, and then turning it the other. As he did that, he glanced up from the coffee and looked John right in the eye. "That fishin' hole you told us about sure did look good, John, just like you said it would, except for one thing ... There wasn't a fish out there to be had anywhere." Bill paused his story for a moment. Then, he slowly began shaking his head from side to side, as if in disbelief of his own story.
"We fished all day long and never got a single bite." He took a long sip of his coffee and said, "Well, John, I got to thinkin' about what you said about fishin' at night, and then it dawned on me, 'Oh yeah, John said he was fishin' down there at night, plus he was usin' a whole chicken.' All we had with us that day was a can of old night crawlers and some cut shad, so we drove out to the bait store to get some chicken, just like you said, and came back later that night."
He paused for a moment to let the tension build a little, then he carried on ... "Well, the bait store didn't have any whole chickens, so we just got chicken livers instead." To lay the groundwork for a bit of foreshadowing, Bill added, "That right there might be where we messed up."
Bill paused for a second time, "I also remembered you were usin' a big ol' homemade treble hook, so I thought to myself, 'I'd better rig me up somethin' just in case we have better luck at snaggin' a fish than we've had all day long at catchin' one; so I reached way down into my tackle box and rigged up one of those big, 12-ought, octopus hooks that we used to use for fishin' over there on the east coast."
He motioned with his right hand toward the East, then again as to the size of the hook he used that night.
"It was a doozy!"
He let that settle for a moment, then after everyone had a little time to gauge the size of the hook and how far it was to the East Coast, Bill continued, "I rigged up that big 12/0 treble hook and gobbed it real good with about half a pound of chicken liver and gave it a heave out there just as far as I could throw it!"
He paused again ...
"I let it set there on the bottom like that for about ten minutes, then I felt a little tug on my line and I gave that big ol' hook a real hard yank!"
Everyone was paying close attention by now, as Bill made yanking motions with both hands while describing the terrible fight he had in reeling that thing back in. He said, "I got that thing right up to the boat before I realized it wasn't even a fish!"
He paused again for effect, then went on with his story. "When it finally broke water, I could hardly believe my eyes!" He said, "It wasn't a fish at all, it was an old lantern!...
When I got it up to the boat where I could see it better, I started wipin' the moss off of it and I could see that it had somethin' stamped on the fuel tank there, so I really got to scrubbin' it good then, and got my buddy there to shine his flashlight on it so I could read the words ... You ain't gonna believe this." He said, pausing one last time, building to a crescendo.
"The words it had stamped on it read like this, 'Santa Maria, 1492!' As I was sittin' there rubbin' that lantern off real good, I thought I felt a little warmth comin' off of it too, so I began scrubbin' the moss off of the globe like this."
He made a hard scrubbing motion with both hands, almost like he was hand washing an old pair of pants.
"When I finally got the moss scrubbed off the globe so I could see down inside there, I noticed a little glow. So, I scrubbed it a little more, and directly, way down in there, I could see a tiny yellow flame ... Wouldn't you know it?!... After all those years, that dang lantern was still lit!"
John cut Bill off in mid-sentence, "Bill, I might believe you snagged an old lantern out there, but there ain't no way in 'explicative' that it was still lit!"
Bill turned his head to one side and put his hand up, sort of in a 'Princes wave' type motion and signaled for John to take a breather, "I'll tell you what John... I'll make you a deal ... You knock 300-pounds off that catfish you caught and I'll blow that light out."
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Post by woodeye on Oct 11, 2022 9:13:06 GMT -6
That was hilarious! heavyhitterokra.
If anybody can top that one, we'll have to change their screen name to Cool Whip, 'cause they can top anything.
And chrysanthemum didn't even have to dive in to help...
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Post by hmoosek on Oct 11, 2022 9:51:46 GMT -6
Hahahaaa. I’m busting a gut over here!!!!!!
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