So, I head out last Saturday with my dad to go find some dumb catfish; we're driving to Carmine, Texas to visit my cousin and do a shakedown of some of the local fishing holes he knows of. Near RoundTop, not far from Brenham and College Station (Gig'em Aggies!) this is VERY beautiful country...in places. In others it's nothing but dirt, stickers and snakes.
The lakes we end up fishing are on private property, which for me is a pain in the ass because I feel like...I dunno...I'm horning in on somebody's fishin' hole. Does that sound strange? The first lake was bust, more of a cattle watering hole really, about half an acre lake, no real bank to fish from, and yours truely looses his rig in the local flora...a ratty-looking stick all by it's lonesome, looking at me like 'What did *I* do?'...embarassing really. Every once in a while, my casting kung fu leaves me for a second and I end up looking rather silly...same with my dart game, but that's another blog.
We're baiting our hooks from the tailgate, and let me tell you something about catfish bait that those of you who *don't* work the water for catfish may not know...catfish bait is rank. I don't mean 'kinda' rank, or a little stinky. I mean hot roadkill buried under a rabbit hutch kind of rank...the kind that, well, makes you wonder if you should be eating something what you were catching with it...ya know? The joke of the morning went something like 'I don't blame them, I wouldn't eat this crap either!' We all end up in agreement that 'cattle blood' bait was for people who were either far more serious about catfishing than we were, or took a bath once a month whether they needed it or not and didn't seem to mind the smell. So we opted for some 'fresher' bait, frozen shrimp and chicken gizzards. I know it doesn't sound like much of a change, but trust me...it was the same difference you would find in comparing the smell of a freezer burned steak, and a sunburned jellyfish...nuff said!
The second place we stopped at was on what must have been close to 2500 acres of ranch. Parts of it were nothing but mesquite sticker bushes and rocks, but every few hundred yards you'd run across a cattle tank, a pond, or a lake that would have greenery just spread out from it like the ripples on the water itself. Patches of land that had been worked hard over the years to keep back the brambles...rocks had been drug away, chains drug behind horses, then tractors and trucks to sweep the land clear of the harshness and make it into grazing land. This place was nice, and probably would have had a boatload of fish in it, but it was hard to get to. From a distance, the weeds looked harmess, but once you got up on them, they were shoulder high, razor sharp, and you could hear the wasps, bees, hornets, locusts, and other bugs just shouldering through the outer rim of them. Dad got bit by something, we think it was a spider. He just got it looked at today, but it had grown to the size of a saucer this morning. I lost my bait a few times, then finally got a bite that must have been somehing upward of 12 lbs. or so, but since I was fishing with a double hooked rig, I think it got caught on a log (or I had hooked a turtle) because I had to pull it loose and broke it. That was two.
The last place we stopped, was...well it was as perfect a fishing spot as I've been to in quite a while. Grass all the way up to the bank, a surface with a light, shower door ripple to it. Lilly pads and cattails on one end, a deep drop off to about 15 feet on the other. As I'm watching my line, I notice this black shape next to the bank out of the corner of my eye. At first, it's just a group of bubbles, but as it grows closer, I see that it's a swirling mass of tiny, baby catfish. I find myself facinated by the way they scour the bank, just below the surface. Swirling clockwise (why clockwise I wonder?) like an organic scrubber just in the shallows of the shore, probing every nook for something to eat, stirring up a small maelstrom of bubbles in the process. I look up and my bobber is below the water, I catch my first (and only) fish of the day, he's a little one compared to the 7 pounder my cousin had caught in the land of hornets earlier, but a keeper nonetheless. Later, I found myself mezmerized by this place, this green mirror of life in what looked to be a carpet of weeds, dust and thorns. So much so that the next four fish get lunch for free...I never even notice until it's too late. Ah well...
No matter where you go, there is an oasis. At times, it's obvious, others need to be found. But they always seem to be there. Perhaps it really isn't about getting what you want, but wanting what you've got. (Sheryl Crow plagerism not withstanding) Or at the very least, taking the time to appreciate that which you've been shown. For now.
It was a good day...daydreaming induced sunburn and all.
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