Well, not really, but I got your attention didn't I?
Well, I'm gonna be honest with you folks before I start this story of tiny fish, heavy wind and an impatient 13 year old, my fishing stories for the next few weeks probably won't be great or typical Turtlebug fashion and here's why. On Wednesday of last week, while talking with Miss Rhonda at work, I noticed a little spot on my arm, looked like an ant bite. Veddy Interesting I thought. Probably from playing with the dogs Tuesday evening. By Thursday morning, it was much bigger and had about a quarter sized raised red and hot ring around it. I've been whining 'bout my gall bladder so I just figured it was nothing. On Friday morning, the size of the red circle had spred to about six inches all around the center. Now this had me worried, especially when my entire arm was aching and I had a fever. I let the pathologist at work look at it and he told me to take my behind to the Doc ASAP. As my luck would have it, my Dr.'s answering service informed me he was out of town.
I went to a walk-in clinic with a Dr. I know and trust. Two injections, three pills and three prescriptions later, the diagnosis is either a spider bite or a tick bite and I need to keep an eye open for the tell-tale "Bullseye" and joint pain and more fever which is not something I'm happy about because what he was getting at was Lyme disease. Doc warned me that the meds were going to make me feel worse than the wound itself. Either way, the redness and hottness has subsided a bit, but the hole is getting a bit bigger and nasty looking so other than being scared of it being a Brown Recluse bite or a tick bite, the meds have me feeling quite "rough" and lazy so this wasn't the best planned fishing trip or the most productive, but I did spend a couple of hours with my son so that in itself was way worth it. Disclaimer, I don't wanna hear nothing 'bout my arm. 
On to the story.
I did not wake up at the crack of dawn as planned. I got up around 9am and let the kids sleep. I fixed some muffins and we sat around and watched a few movies. I felt so bad, Harley kept giving me that "MOM" look. Mr. Turtlebug said he'd take him fishing but it was obvious he wanted to go with mom so I asked him if we could wait til this afternoon and he agreed. We talked about going somewhere new, but I didn't feel like getting myself into an unfamiliar situation so I told him how about we try Reed Bingham. He's never been so he said okay.
I checked the fridge and gathered all the baits, told him to limit himself to two rods and just my tackle bag. We left and headed up to Adel. We paid our $3 parking fee and proceeded to the little fishing dock by the dam. It was breezy and nice. We grabbed everything and walked down there, looked around and I said "Harley, where's the bait?" "I thought you got it mom" 
.
I FORGOT THE BAIT, left it sitting on the bottom shelf of the fridge!
Luckily, my son is a firm believer in catching fish on Gnautley Chicken Dogs and had grabbed a pack, that he had already cut up and put in a container. Smart kid! 
Looked around and found a bar of Zote in my 370 so as far as we were concerned, we were in business!!
We were at the dam and we had Zote so we KNEW we were in catfish heaven so we each took a rod and sank some Zote to the bottom and let them sit.
Harley put a hot dog on his other rod and I was crankin one of the Bitsy Minnows that Strike King sent me to try.
Harley got a little camera happy.....
Well, the Bug started getting hits on his hot dog, so he braced for "THE BIG ONE" to hit. Alas, his "BIG ONE" turned out to be nothing more than baby panfish playing around. My son, being a 13 year old boy, forgot to put the lid back on the hotdogs and all of a sudden, I see the hot dog container lid floating by. I cleared my throat and gave him "THE LOOK" and he was like "WHAT, WHAT, What did I do?" I told him to find a way to fish it out and gave him that talk about littering and preservation. He's a good kid so he took his hot dog off and started trying to hook it. This kid goes to screaming and I turned around and he had a nice sized yellow-bellied-some-kind-of-panfish (I didn't have enough time to look at it) snagged in the side! I picked up the camera and right before I snapped the picture, the fish flipped off of the hook and made one sommersault on the metal dock and straight back into the water he went. Words cannot describe the silence between us and the words that I'm so certain were zooming through his brain that he would not dare utter in his mother's presence, so here's a picture of that moment for your enjoyment.
Harley asked for the camera after that. I gave it to him and turned back around and started crankin' again. He later told me when I downloaded these pics that the back of my shirt said exactly what he was thinking when he watched that fish jump right back into the water.
Well, we didn't get many bites, I told him lets' pull it all in and head home. I thought my Zote felt a little heavy at first and quite bumpy to reel in, so Harley commemorated the moment by trying to make me feel good and let me know that I did actually catch "something", just nothing that I really wanted.
We got a good laugh, had a good time talking and joking around. But not nearly as good of a laugh as when we left the park. We came in one way and left another. Right after we passed the Catfish House (wishing it had been open for business this evening), Harley started laughing and hollered "MOM!!! STOP, you gotta take a picture of this sign". I rolled outta the Suburban laughing so hard I couldn't hardly take the pic.
I guess this guy got pretty tired of rude people throwing garbage on his property. HHHmmmm, Hair and teeth, that's pretty mild if you ask me!
Well, I'm gonna be honest with you folks before I start this story of tiny fish, heavy wind and an impatient 13 year old, my fishing stories for the next few weeks probably won't be great or typical Turtlebug fashion and here's why. On Wednesday of last week, while talking with Miss Rhonda at work, I noticed a little spot on my arm, looked like an ant bite. Veddy Interesting I thought. Probably from playing with the dogs Tuesday evening. By Thursday morning, it was much bigger and had about a quarter sized raised red and hot ring around it. I've been whining 'bout my gall bladder so I just figured it was nothing. On Friday morning, the size of the red circle had spred to about six inches all around the center. Now this had me worried, especially when my entire arm was aching and I had a fever. I let the pathologist at work look at it and he told me to take my behind to the Doc ASAP. As my luck would have it, my Dr.'s answering service informed me he was out of town.
I went to a walk-in clinic with a Dr. I know and trust. Two injections, three pills and three prescriptions later, the diagnosis is either a spider bite or a tick bite and I need to keep an eye open for the tell-tale "Bullseye" and joint pain and more fever which is not something I'm happy about because what he was getting at was Lyme disease. Doc warned me that the meds were going to make me feel worse than the wound itself. Either way, the redness and hottness has subsided a bit, but the hole is getting a bit bigger and nasty looking so other than being scared of it being a Brown Recluse bite or a tick bite, the meds have me feeling quite "rough" and lazy so this wasn't the best planned fishing trip or the most productive, but I did spend a couple of hours with my son so that in itself was way worth it. Disclaimer, I don't wanna hear nothing 'bout my arm. On to the story.
I did not wake up at the crack of dawn as planned. I got up around 9am and let the kids sleep. I fixed some muffins and we sat around and watched a few movies. I felt so bad, Harley kept giving me that "MOM" look. Mr. Turtlebug said he'd take him fishing but it was obvious he wanted to go with mom so I asked him if we could wait til this afternoon and he agreed. We talked about going somewhere new, but I didn't feel like getting myself into an unfamiliar situation so I told him how about we try Reed Bingham. He's never been so he said okay.
I checked the fridge and gathered all the baits, told him to limit himself to two rods and just my tackle bag. We left and headed up to Adel. We paid our $3 parking fee and proceeded to the little fishing dock by the dam. It was breezy and nice. We grabbed everything and walked down there, looked around and I said "Harley, where's the bait?"
"I thought you got it mom" .I FORGOT THE BAIT, left it sitting on the bottom shelf of the fridge!
Luckily, my son is a firm believer in catching fish on Gnautley Chicken Dogs and had grabbed a pack, that he had already cut up and put in a container. Smart kid! Looked around and found a bar of Zote in my 370 so as far as we were concerned, we were in business!! We were at the dam and we had Zote so we KNEW we were in catfish heaven so we each took a rod and sank some Zote to the bottom and let them sit.
Harley put a hot dog on his other rod and I was crankin one of the Bitsy Minnows that Strike King sent me to try.
Harley got a little camera happy.....
Well, the Bug started getting hits on his hot dog, so he braced for "THE BIG ONE" to hit. Alas, his "BIG ONE" turned out to be nothing more than baby panfish playing around. My son, being a 13 year old boy, forgot to put the lid back on the hotdogs and all of a sudden, I see the hot dog container lid floating by. I cleared my throat and gave him "THE LOOK" and he was like "WHAT, WHAT, What did I do?" I told him to find a way to fish it out and gave him that talk about littering and preservation. He's a good kid so he took his hot dog off and started trying to hook it. This kid goes to screaming and I turned around and he had a nice sized yellow-bellied-some-kind-of-panfish (I didn't have enough time to look at it) snagged in the side! I picked up the camera and right before I snapped the picture, the fish flipped off of the hook and made one sommersault on the metal dock and straight back into the water he went. Words cannot describe the silence between us and the words that I'm so certain were zooming through his brain that he would not dare utter in his mother's presence, so here's a picture of that moment for your enjoyment.
Harley asked for the camera after that. I gave it to him and turned back around and started crankin' again. He later told me when I downloaded these pics that the back of my shirt said exactly what he was thinking when he watched that fish jump right back into the water.
Well, we didn't get many bites, I told him lets' pull it all in and head home. I thought my Zote felt a little heavy at first and quite bumpy to reel in, so Harley commemorated the moment by trying to make me feel good and let me know that I did actually catch "something", just nothing that I really wanted.
We got a good laugh, had a good time talking and joking around. But not nearly as good of a laugh as when we left the park. We came in one way and left another. Right after we passed the Catfish House (wishing it had been open for business this evening), Harley started laughing and hollered "MOM!!! STOP, you gotta take a picture of this sign". I rolled outta the Suburban laughing so hard I couldn't hardly take the pic.
I guess this guy got pretty tired of rude people throwing garbage on his property. HHHmmmm, Hair and teeth, that's pretty mild if you ask me!
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