Goin' Fishin'

I love to fish. I grew up doing it all the time. My folks have a pond that is only about 50 feet from the back door...not really good when I'm the only one at home and should be cleaning and doing laundry inside, but instead I'm out fishing....

Until I hear the truck coming down the road then I throw the pole down and run in the house really fast ans act like I'm working...

Anyways, I married a man who really doesn't care to fish...ever...so last year on mothers day I made him go.

And here I am with the one and only fish I caught. Notice how I have to hold the thing up by my head and how the dogs are staring intently at the fish.... 

 Then back goes the fish and....

in go the dogs.

We learned a few things that day...

1. We have fish in the pond...we really weren't sure

2. The dogs hate fish and want to kill them all.

Well after all the  dry weather we have had this year all our ponds have taken a bad beating. Some have gone dry but this one here by our house has kept some water in it, but it has gotten really low and we noticed how the cattle had destroyed the the pond dam so we decided to have it cleaned out

So on this past Monday....when it was 70+ degrees the guys showed up with the equipment and started working on the pond.  The started by cleaning off all the trees off the dam.
  

Since it was so beautiful Chester and I walked out there and watched them work...He loved watching the equipment work.

Like normal the dogs followed us out there.

Before the could start the pond clean out and the dam repair they had to get all the water out. Lucky for us we have another pond just on the other side of the pond dam, so when we have to bust the dam to let the water out we didn't lose any of the precious water.

The digging as started....

I will show some before and after pics in another post, but here is some pics of the work being done.

 

As you can see there is still a good amount of water in the pond, but don't be fooled, it's probably no more than a couple of feet deep in the middle. 

Finally he made it through the dam

And out goes the water and hopefully some fish...

Jasper watched with crazy excitement.

And then he saw a fish back in the pond........or maybe it's the loch ness monster...either way...

Off the dogs go, back into the pond to see what they can catch and kill....

and how muddy they can get. 

And some fish they did catch.

and they weren't bad sized fish.

And to my astonishment there were catfish out there too, I was excited about this.

Every time the dogs would come out with a fish I would confiscate it from them and then take it a chuck it into the other pond.  

After which they would go back in and try to catch it again.

I think I threw one fish back in 4 times.....I don't think it made it. 

Since it was beautiful out I decided to do some "search and rescue" fishing. 

So I put Chester to bed and...

Put my hip boot on, grabbed a shovel and bucket and away I went.

My Helpers came along too.

Kit the boarder collie was the only smart one, she stayed on shore and stayed clean. 

Ya see all that nastiness, I was out in the middle of it saving fish. 

I got mostly small fish, but there were a few nice sized ones that I pulled out and saved too.    

Not all the fish made it....Jasper caught one really nice bass and then thought it was a good idea to bring it up to the house and drop it in the front yard.....yuck!!

There has been a lot of work done on the pond since I saved some fish...it looks like a different pond.

But I will share more on that later.

Hope ya'll have a great weekend

JP