I'm having a hard time coming up with the catchy diary title, and this one has a real fish involved, so putting the bait on my diary's hook is highly significant.....
How does the song line go?
"don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till its gone". Too many letters.
To heck with it, "you get a line, I'll get a pole, let's go down to the fishin' hole....."
And the only thing you need to know, going into this fish tale, is that the world record bass weighs 21 pounds.
Granddad built the main pond back in the early 1960's, he stocked it with some catfish, which pretty much disappeared in 1975, when Boo McGriff bought a 30 foot seining net, and a bunch of us teenagers got into the fish fry mood every weekend, (depending on whose folks were out of town).
So, this main pond (a little larger/wider than a football field) had been in constant use for watering cattle, up until the day in February 2004 when I sold my Brangus herd to concentrate on meat goats.
Goats don't require a lot of water, a blessing during droughts. There are 3 other smaller ponds, 2 went completely dry last May.
Across the road lives Ed. He had to retire when cancer hit him a couple of years ago, but he's recovered pretty well.
This story is really about Ed.
He has been hunting and fishing all his life, has a fancy boat (two boats in fact). He probably has 20 rods and reels, thousands of dollars involved in the hobby. He subscribes to a four outdoor magazines, keeps his hunting license current.
Back in the mid 1990's he caught a few Florida variety bass stocked over at Plunkett's Lake, (one of those pay by the pound places) and he didn't feel like cleaning them, so he put them in our pond.
Maybe 5 fish total, none over 3 pounds. And then he forgot about them.
Meantime, too keep young goats I'm weaning in the 5 acre cutoff pasture, I built up two piles of limbs and branches reaching out into the water. I've also built up the height of the runoff, which added about 3 foot to the potential depth of the pond.
Goats don't swim, nor wade through knee deep mud, and in addition the limbs would give minnows a hiding place. These two wood piles, the minnow hiding spots, are the only explanation for what happened to Ed right after Christmas.
Once the catfish were gone, the brim took over. Brim and snapping turtles, I thinned the turtles out a few years ago, but I bet there are still more than a dozen 30 pound turtles lurking.
I put in 6 "grass carp" in 1999, have seen them swirl the water and reckon they grew to about the length of your arm now. The grey herons, a pair of Canadian geese, different varieties of ducks, kingfishers and sandpipers all hang out around.
I have a regular bio-system now.
So the pond is mainly visual for me, and during the worst drought in history, a measuring device. Our runoff feeds the Locust Fork/Warrior River systems, so thats good news for Birmingham/Atlanta. It's rising about 4-6 inches per week, so I'd presume all the headwaters are doing the same thing.
For two or three years I've been telling Ed "you need to drop a hook in that pond, there is something jumping in the evenings"...but he preferred to hitch up the boat, waste 10 gallons of gas, and go to Lake Guntersville.
My friend's kids were happy catching 5-10 brim in less than a half hour, using bread or squash for bait, brim eat anything.
Finally, on December 28, 2007, there was a knock on the door, Ed holding a single fishing rod, he said he was going to finally, for the first time, try and see what was jumping out in that pond.
About 45 minutes later there was another knock on the door, Ed holding up THIS fish....
"What do you think he weighs, 8-10 pounds?"
"At least, I'm going to go step on the bathroom scales", he answered.
About 10 minutes later he was back at the door, empty handed. "You are NOT going to believe this....fourteen pounds".
His wife had snapped the picture, in his mind he was wondering if he should have it mounted, but he had chores to do. He had taken it back to the pond, swirled it's tail around to revive it, and set it free.
He's been kicking himself in the butt ever since.
In his fishing magazines there are "lunker" photos, amateurs with Poloroids, the biggest fish last year was only eleven pounds.
My fishing buddy in NC says the biggest he ever took out of a pond was maybe eight.
My brother says the worlds record is 21 pounds, worth a million dollars, and he wants to come seine the pond again and jam a pot roast down this bass' throat.
The day Ed caught it, he used a cheapie $30 rod, but then he bought a portable scale, used all his fanciest $200 rods. He's has caught nearly 20 fish since that day, the biggest maybe nine pounds. (I told him to tag them if he wanted.)
We know that Moby Dick bass is down there, a lot bigger than the one Andy and Opie were going after.
I won't let anybody else catch Ed's fish, but it has now turned into an obsession, he has a route planned to get it to a certified scale 20 miles away, he purchased a live well ready to throw in his pickup bed.
He has snagged $20-30 in lures, spent another $200 in portable digital scales and a sloshproof fiberglass live well for his truck.
And he kicks himself in the butt the whole time he is out there enjoying the fair weather, because he KNOWS that fish is out there laughing at him. Me too, teasing him about the thousands of dollars his hobby cost him, and the record fish was 500 yards from his front porch.
So, Saturday readers, have you got a "one that you gave away" story?