Of Mice and Men - Blog Edition

The past week was one of great anticipation for me.  As I have already noted, while at my fraternity gathering, I went trout fishing with no success.  Such results did not deter me, however, from having determined to go fishing again very soon.  Soon, as it turned out, was Tuesday.  One of the local teens planned to come with me, and ideally, bring a friend or two.  We would depart early in the morning and make a whole day of it.  

It was truly spoken that the best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry.

First was the problem of the job.  Patrick had to work in the morning and would be unable to leave until around noon.  Second, Patrick also recently celebrated his sixteenth birthday, thus requiring him to accomplish another rite of passage.  He had to purchase a fishing license.  In South Dakota, one can purchase a fishing license along with one's pheasant license, but to do this, a minor must provide his hunter safety card number.  (If my perception is accurate, this is required in order to prevent as many sixteen year old boys as possible from carrying a firearm, as boys of that age are not widely recognized to be proficient at keeping track of innocuous pieces of business card sized card stock containing important pieces of personal data.  Patrick, though a marvelous young man, is no exception to this rule.)  Moreover, neither of us had gotten around to the business of inviting some of his friends until the night before the expedition was to transpire.

Somehow Patrick's mother worked a miracle at the Game, Fish, and Parks office on Tuesday morning, and Patrick had a license by the time I arrived at his house.  After a sandwich and promises to have him back by six so that he could return to work, we departed for Custer State Park (I already had the entrance pass to the park after the Harney Peak adventure the day before) searching for a series of dams I had never seen.  I only had to make one u-turn before finding the parking area for the dams, and by about 1:45 our lures hit the water.  No luck at the first one.  We trudged on to the second.  Patrick stayed at the dam and cast into the current.  I moved further along and cast from the bank.  The first spinner did nothing.  So too with the second.  And the third.  But, a lovely green and pink spoon quickly did the trick.  

I had soon caught my limit . . .

. . . of little baby trout.

Luckily, baby trout are exceeding dumb.  Unfortunately, full sized fourteen inch trout are not.  All in all, I hauled in seven of the little devils.  It was not quite the fishing experienced I had hoped for, but I did catch fish, even if I couldn't keep them.  Which is better than what Patrick did.  The big trout were just beginning to rise and feed again as we departed.

I have occasionally wondered how it is that people can fish every weekend, and love it.  I am beginning to see why.