Fish on!

Maybe it was two years ago that I had the idea to do some fishing again. I hadn’t been fishing in quite a while, and so I planned a little trip to Putah Creek. But now it looked like a dumb idea; the sky is overcast and threatening to rain. I head out anyway. I don’t even know what I’m going to fish with; I’m bringing a spinning outfit and a fly rod.

I arrive at my destination and the weather is no better; in fact the clouds appear even darker. None-the-less I attack  the water with my spinning rod; I’m using a Mepps #2. No luck! Over and over again I cast, but still nothing. The water seems to be a bit murky. Then I remember a successful fishing trip to the Walker river with my friend Sarge. There he introduced me to the technique of “dead drift nymph” fishing. I switch to my fly rod and tie on a nymph ( probably tied by Sarge ).

I cast upstream and let it sink, drifting downstream naturally in the current. I see hesitation in the floating line and pull the rod up smartly. Fish on! After a good fight I managed to net him; a beautiful rainbow trout! And now the sun is coming out. and I’m feeling much better about the day.

Mergus merganser

I saw three mergansers swimming rapidly downstream in the creek the other day. In fact they were moving so fast that I only managed to snap a photo of  one. They were diving and popping up unexpectedly downstream. It looked like the fishing was pretty good!

 The common merganser in a large diving duck, with a long bill for catching fish. Apparently this is a wintering area for them.

dining in San Francisco

From time to time I like to review what’s going on in the world of wildlife news.  Today I read that the leaf cutter ants have escaped from their high-tech enclosure at San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences.  It had taken three years and countless hours to rebuild, but just months for the leaf cutters to engineer their escape.

And that wasn’t the only incident;  apparently the giant octopus had been sneaking into the crab enclosure in the evenings.  Then, under cover of darkness, he had been dining on the tasty crustaceans.

I’ve been informed that security has since been tightened.

Years ago when I was in the US army in Germany, I was stationed in the small town of Babenhausen. Behind the rear of the post was a large forest with many interesting trails. On some weekends when I didn’t have a pass to get off post, I would go out back, climb the fence, and explore these various meanderings. There was a wide variety of wildlife to be observed, and occasionally one might see a deer or wild boar.

On several of these excursions I would come upon these giant ant hills. They were upwards of three foot tall or more! They seemed to be mostly composed of pine needles, and they were swarming with activity. Around the perimeter of the hill there was a small trench, lightly filled with leaves, twigs, and more pine needles. It seemed to be constructed so that if some unfortunate small animal came too close it would fall into the trap. At which time the creature would be instantly covered by the ants, and stung into submission. It was kind of shocking how quickly this would take place. In some places there were several of these hills in the same area.

I couldn’t help but imagining the macabre image of someone stumbling on to one of these on a foggy day. One could lose their footing and fall; whereupon the hapless victim would be quickly enveloped, and perhaps paralyzed by this horde of tiny hunters. Fortunately, I never heard of any such occurance. But I always made it a point to do my exploring on a bright and sunny day.

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ant_hill by Guido Guerding