Last Summer we drove to a huge pond owned by one of the Country Doctor’s nurses and located about 40 miles north of us to do some fishing. We had to climb the backside of a big dam to reach the pond which was out in the middle of a pasture. We hauled all our gear, lawn chairs and a cooler full of twizzlers, Cheetos and sandwiches up that dam. Once we got up the dam, we decided we were in a bad spot and had to move all our stuff to the other side of the pond. Finally situated, the family settled in for a little fishing.
It was an idyllic day, warm, sunny, with a light breeze, and the fish were biting. We caught fish for hours. Everybody caught fish. Jack caught fish, Drew caught fish, Ethan caught fish, Cal caught fish, etc…etc… The Country Doctor strung our catch on a long stringer in the water where the fish continued to twitch around. After several blissful hours, we reached the end of the Cheetos and the twizzlers and it was time to go.
The reason we caught all those fish was in the hopes of transporting them back to our pond, thus stocking our pond for free. You see, our pond is not original. Sorry to disappoint the purists.
Our pond started out as a small silt pond for the neighbors pond. I don’t know much about pond technology, but evidently a silt pond captures the mud and debris keeping the larger pond clear and clean. But who wants a silt pond? I wanted a pond pond. So we drained the silt pond, dug a much bigger hole, raised the dam and Wa La – Pond Pond.
Which is why, on this beautiful, blue sky day we are carefully trying to put a massive stringer of twitching fish into a large purple plastic tub and then trying to haul it up a huge dam to our car, which was impossible. Eventually the Country Doctor found an old bucket and started bringing buckets of fish over the dam, dumping them into the purple tub and trotting back over the dam for another bucketful.
Then we drove 40 miles back to our pond. The water in the toy box sloshed badly so we put the lid on the box. It was dark by the time we pulled up to our own pond. We backed down to the shore and started to unload the fish. They weren’t in very good shape. The Country Doctor sort of tried to run the fish through the water to fill their gills and encourage to swim. It was dark. We were tired. We dumped the rest of the fish in the pond and left
The next day, we drove out to have a look and it was quite a sight. The surface of our pond was covered in floating fish. Their white bellies drifting slowly towards the dam and the shore. It looked like Fish Armageddon. Like something out of the book of Exodus. We felt like the Egyptians after the plagues. Watching our big bountiful catch floating belly up on the blue waters of the Nile… I mean our pond.
Later that day, the Country Doctor skimmed all of those dead fish out of our pond and threw them into the trees.
Tomorrow, we are going to stock the pond for NOT free. A big truck is going to pull up to our pond and dump a bunch of healthy fish in it. Hope to get some good pics for ya.
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