Life On The River

Spring Day in January

Its a beautiful day. A glorious spring day in January. It has gotten up to 77 degrees and looking out over the river I see a otter playing in the river. It is having fun watching the little dogs play. I run for my camera. I got the the picture

I went outside, its warm, feeling the sun on your face makes you feel good instantly. Looking out on the river, your fishing rod comes to mind.

But, I really need to rake, the fall leaves are still silently waiting for me and I do, a huge mound of dead leaves are raked into a pile to be burned. Too bad there are still lots of leaves to rack even though you have been raking for what seemed like hours. But, wait, without hesitation, you grab the rod and reel from the shelf and it was just as you had left it last summer, with the same above the water plug on it with dashes of red on the white body of the fake minnow.

You go to the rivers edge and toss out your first cast and low and behold you feel a tug at the end of your line. Is it a one of the many branches you have tossed out into the river as you cleaned the yard? Oh no, maybe its one of Jim’s river art that had fallen as the river has swelled a few times this year.

But then you feel the tug of war as your line is bending and you just now know its a fish!! You really didn’t believe you would catch one and you really wasn’t prepared to catch one, but there it is. You finally pull it out of the water and after just a glimpse you know its even big enough to eat!! You drag it in and the "kids" are all excited about seeing the fish just as much as you were.
So you think to yourself, well if I caught one more that size, I could fix fresh fish for dinner. So you run back to the house to put the fish in some water so it won’t die.
Excited and running back to the river edge, to throw out your line again but it goes into the tree.

Well, OK, concentrate and you maybe could work it out of the tree branches, so you start reeling and letting go, reeling and letting go, and it works!! Your surprised, but it really did work.

Well it worked but now you have a red spot as the plug hits you right in the chest and falls down and catches your shirt and its not letting go. So you work and work at it trying real hard not to tear your shirt but to no avail so you run back to the house and get the scissors and presto it finally off your shirt. So now there is a hole there but where the plug hit you doesn’t hurt anymore so what the heck.

You run back to the river and toss another time and it stuck in another tree. So now your thinking, I really didn’t need to have fish for dinner. So you run back to the house and get the fish you had put in water and take him to the river where you took a picture just for proof and let him go. You put your pole up and go to take a look at the picture of your prize fish and it didn’t take. No proof to be had.

You look at the river and see a pair of ducks landing on the surface. The pony across the river on the other side is running circles around its mother and kicking up its heels.
It don’t matter you don’t have a mess of fish, after all its spring in January, what can be better than that.

But, I did catch a fish today.
Bobby