Hello Hivians and friends. I hope you all had a great weekend. I very much enjoyed mine despite not predicting the water conditions for some Sunday morning fishing.
Prior to my drive to my fishing location I gathered all my fishing equipment in my car. The weather really felt good in my driveway. It was sunny around 45° F and there wasn't even a hint of wind. I was thinking I'm going to catch some fish today. The temperatures were well below freezing here for a good week and a half. This caused a lot of the body of waters in the area to freeze over. Thursday and Friday the temperatures got up to around 50° F. Saturday it got to an unusually 62° F. My thoughts were I should be able to fish on open waters
It's really no longer fall here. Almost all leaf carrying trees are bare now. I received a call from two buddies I was going to meet to fish with. They arrived at the pond prior to my arrival and gave me the news that a lot of it was ice covered. This changed some things for me and I'm glad they gave me a heads up. Usually I will pick up some ice just prior to arriving for my cooler. I decided not to because my past experience tells me whenever a body of water is half covered in ice this time of year, the fishing won't be good. If I'm wrong, there's a gas station not too far away.
A lot of the shoreline was covered in ice. My favorite place to fish here is off a dock. There is a lot of structure underneath the water there. The water surrounding the dock was frozen though. If I had to guess thickeness, it's between 2 to 4 inches. We did witness some other fishermen standing on it. In my opinion, it's way too early to do that, especially on a warmer winter day. It's just not safe to do that now. These photos provide both shadows and reflections on the ice. I like the bridge shadow the most😃
Not only fishermen were on the ice a heck of a lot geese were too. The open water area in the first photo above is where we fished at. We fished for about an hour and didn't get a single bite. It ended up being a little windy too. I did end up catching a fish later on but not from the water! More on that a bit later. It was neat to catch some of the reflections of the geese on top of the ice.
Now I'm hunting for shadow and reflections. At this point, all my fishing gear is already packed up in the car. Above are some bare trees reflecting on top of the ice. I found these reflections really cool to witness as I decided to give the place a good walk around. Since I'm done fishing, the wind died down and the temperatures started to climb a few degrees. What do you do?
On to some shadows, well mostly shadows. I came across some stump benches that were neatly arranged to give a good views of the pond. I said it was warming up, right? I decided to take a seat at the front row of all those benches. It was time to pull back the hoodie and take a simple selfie, haha. Later on, I crossed a bridge but before doing that I had to capture some shadows on that bridge. Out of all the reflections and shadows I like this one the most. It neatly shows rail shadows all the way down the bridge.
My last show of a shadow. Just a squirrel who was acting very squirrelly surrounded by shadows. My last picture here at the pond as I was headed for a surprise lunch made by my _ _ _ _ friend.
I was thinking of going out somewhere together, but she beat me to it. She whipped up some food in her kitchen. The soup was delicious and Im not sure of all the ingredients. I know it contained butternut squash, homemade noodles, rice, onion, chinese cabbage, tomatoes, and some other garden veggies. She had mentioned that her mother made this a lot when she was a little girl. Perhaps I need to get this recipe, it really is worth it.
So I didn't catch any fish at the pond but I found one that made it to my plate, haha. The fried fish you see is a blue gill that I did actually catch awhile back. It was rather tasty with much flavor thanks to an assortment of peppers and spices. Fish is tasty prepared with its bones!
Despite running into ice that I wasn't expecting to see, it turned out to be a great day. Shadow, reflections and spending time with good company made the day. Be good, stay safe and I hope you all have a great start to your week. Until next time!
