Left work early today to go fishing (that's acceptable right?). I started off with a small spinner and caught a few bluegill and a really small largemouth on the north shore of Wingra. Once my confidence was up, I switched to a crankbait minnow in hopes of getting a larger bass or a northern. Didn't get any bites so I moved down past the dam to the start of Wingra creek. Still nothing. I even saw some decent size bass up close to shore (spawning?) that were completely ignoring my lure.
I was about done but decided to try out one of my lures that I had never caught anything on. It was a gummy bear textured fish with a big weight in the center. It had a rubber tail that wiggled a lot when you pulled it through the water. Pretty soon to my surprise I pulled in a nice largemouth. There was this dirty old guy a ways down from me that shouted, "nice fish!!", and hurried down to take a look. This was one nasty guy. His teeth were all yellow and crooked, he had this crazy look in his eyes, and his breath was this awful combination of old liquor and cigarettes. He whipped out his tape measure to check my fish. 14.5 inches. He said, "shoot, another 1/2 inch and he's a keeper." I told him that if I caught a bigger one I'd let him have it.
On my very next cast I got an 11 inch crappie. Snaggle tooth guy practically ran down to look at my catch again. His breath.... wow. After a long conversation about fishing strategies and big fish that got away (from him), he asked me, "you going to keep that fish?" I said yes and he replied, "shoot, I was going to make me a sandwich out of that feller."
I took the crappie home. My cleaning skills need a little refreshing. The fillets weren't very big, but after I breaded them and fried them in butter they tasted great.
3 weeks ago
