The Joy's of Fishing

Last weekend I went with LoW and his brothers to Lake Lavon for a little fishing. I'd forgotten just how relaxing it is, being outside on a sunny spring day, at the lake, drinking a cool beverage from the cooler, and getting a fishing line wet. Catch anything or not, it's a great stress relief. I just wish I could have spent longer, but we got a late start since LoW didn't get off work until 2:00 (I had to mow the lawn anyway) and we met PoD, AQ, The Elfin Princess, and a few others from the singles group for a few games of Laser Tag at Adventure Landing.

Anyway Saturday afternoon we didn't catch a thing, and LoW's brother had the aggravation of hooking a nice size fish, getting it close enough to touch it, and then loosing it when it spit the hook (which ended up happening to me the next day). What's more, there were other people fishing "the spot." there is a fenced off area around a water discharge pipe from the nearby plant. (The plant uses lake water to cool equipment, then releases it back out into the lake) From past experience, fish will gather in such an area, and fishing is awesome, especially when the water is running from the pipe. When I was younger, I used to fish for Channel Cat with my Grandpa, Dad, and brother. There is a town in the southeast corner of Kansas near the Oklahoma state line called Riverton (which was just in the news last week as police found a couple of kids planning another Columbine type rampage), and on one such trip, the four of us caught 42 cat fish, and those are just the ones we kept. We threw back the smaller ones. And we used the real chicken blood for bait too, not the pasty play dough crap they sell now. Chicken liver is a great catfish bait too by the way. But I digress...

The people fishing in "the spot" were reeling in the crappie and bass like mad, and we weren't able to cast into the area, and as a result, had no luck at all. Low's other brother stepped on something, though I didn't see if he actually cut his foot or just scraped it, so the brothers left a little early. Just before we left on Saturday, LoW himself cut the bottom of his foot on a stray rock (most of the area was just hard clay).

The next day after church and lunch, we went again to try to get to "the spot" but again, there were people hogging the area, so we had no choice but to fish the same area again. After about an hour, I made a miss step of my own, and my left food slid off the hard clay and I sunk into about 12 inches of silt, as I was about 10 feet off the bank. I tried 3 times to get good footing on hard ground, but slid right back into the silt, where I kept hitting a rock that was about the size of a football. I finally got my footing, stepped out of the hole, and continued fishing. About 10 minutes later, I thought I'd better have a look at my foot since one of the little piggies, which hurt just a little when I was trying to get out of the muck, persisted in crying "We we we...". It was then that I found that one toe was missing about 1/2 of the nail. I had managed to either mash or cut off the nail, and I had been bleeding into the water for the last 10 minutes. Since it wasn't bleeding bad though, we kept fishing for another hour or so before going home for a shower, bible study (It's Not About Me by Max Lucado) and a couple games of Shadows over Camelot. A very cool game by the way.

On a more serious note, please continue to pray for me and my current financial situation. There is still a legal issue with a former tenant, and I don't know how it's going to play out.

Thanks for Reading,
MV

"I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it."
- WC. Fields