Brown Bullhead Identified
THE
GREAT GETAWAY
How
Big Was It?
AAAAH!
Spring! When the warm air melts the snow and new life sprouts up,
driving my Ford truck on a very
bright and cold winter morning, the extremely bright sun that radiated
through the truck windshield to warm me up like a toasted bun, forced me
to turn down the truck heat.
In
thinking about a story to tell to an audience of fishermen standing
around a wood stove sipping coffee, Jon had slid to a halt for a traffic
light. Looking out the truck window, Jon studied some flashing cop car
lights. The Police car was stopped along side of the road and the cop
was examining what appeared to be a bullhead lying on the side of the
road. Apparently it must have fell out of somebody’s catch on the way
home. He found this so weird, that Jon decided this scene never existed.
This incident did remind him of a bullhead fishing trip. He began to
brew up a good story to tell about the bullhead trip.
It
was in mid-spring, the sky dropped record rains that year. Jon blamed
the wet weather on a fisherman friend that passed on recently because he
lost the “big one”. Since there are holes in the floors of heaven,
every time he cried it rained. However, this did not stop Jon from
fishin’ in the earth’s mud and muck.
The
wiper blades wiped the sprinkling rain off the windshield as Jon parked
his truck. Flicking his lit cigarette in a puddle of muddy water, he
proceeded to gather up his equipment to fish the night away at 4-mile
creek. With four hours of daylight left, Jon had no problem finding a
spot on the banks of
the
creek probably because it’s another rainy day and there weren’t too
many fishermen out. Looking up at the sky, the rain clouds blew away to
bring on a rainless evening. He setup the spot to gather damp but
relatively dry firewood under the shelter of leaves that fell off the
forest of trees surrounding the creeks landscape. After an hour and a
half of fishing, the clouded sky cleared a view to watch the sun sink in
Lake
Ontario
Sitting
in the dark, watching the lightening bugs float in the breeze while the
amber of the fire was flickering up to a moon lit sky. Jon adjusted the
hickory twig in his mouth. On a clouded moon lit sky, the moon cast a
ray of light on the creeks surface. Jon’s bobber bobbed on the moon
lit surface and that caused ripples all around it. The sky flashed when
his bobber disappeared under the water. Jon quickly set his hook on
something that fought back like a dead head. He reeled in close enough
to reach his hand in the water and grabbed his catch. Seeing it was a
bullhead, it was the biggest he ever laid his blue eyes on. Freeing the
bullhead from the hook, a shackling crack of noise from the sky made Jon
drop his fish onto a damp ground. Reaching to pick his catch up, the
bullhead wiggled itself in the water and swam to freedom. Jon then stood
up in disbelief that his 3-pound plus Bullhead just swam away. After a
few more hours Jon packed it in for the evening and left for home and a
warm bed.
The
next day, pulling in the driveway where the fishermen were keeping warm
standing around that wood stove and sipping coffee, Jon parked his truck
and went inside. Joining the gang around the wood stove and listening to
their stories for a while, Jon came up with his story and asked, “Has
anyone heard about the 4 pound Bullhead I lost last night?”’
That
Bullhead just got bigger…….
THE
END
DAVID’S
WORDS OF WISDOM:
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