Fishing for the cycle

I dropped the little blue-headed, silver bodied yellow tailed Jimmy Watt hand-tied jig into a shallow water grass bed and it had barely hit the water when I felt that familiar tap. A white crappie! Not a slab, but a pound of supper meat for sure.

After catching a few more, I got into some black crappie. Obviously males guarding the nest. I was swimming it past a treetop when it got hammered by a big bluegill. I don’t know if he was after the jig or the smelly little Crappie Nibble. But he went in the box, too. A few minutes later, his cousin goggle-eye fell for the blue-headed fishing catching machine.

Bam! Next was a yellow bass. Then came his cousin, a little largemouth bass. But this largemouth didn’t have a large mouth. It was barely big enough to get the jig inside, but he did it. All these fish came in one 20-yard stretch along the banks of Lake D’Arbonne. It seemed apparent, even to me, that the fish were biting.

Then I realized — I was just one fish away from fishing for the freshwater cycle (unlike my fishing buddy George, I don’t include carp or goo in the cycle). All I needed was a catfish. One stinkin’ catfish. I spent the rest of the morning fending off crappie and bream, changing colors and technique. But I could never catch a catfish.

Moral of the story:

“Never go fishing without a box of worms” … or “fishing is fun no matter what’s thumping your bait”.