Rule # :
I went fishing with the boy today. He has become one heck of a fisherman and one of his friends lives in a large home with a huge pond or small lake that he has been promising me would yield large bass. We went out there the day after my truck came out of the shop with newly repaired air conditioning, rear shocks, and repaired oil leak. The shop I took it to, Tuffy's in Muncie, IN, gets my best rating. All of those repairs were very reasonable and the repairman took the time to show me the worn parts. It's a wonderful feeling driving around in a truck that's reliable. I was telling the boy (probably to his dismay) about how many cars/trucks I have had that were totally unreliable. Knowing that your car will start and get you to your destination is a wonderful thing--and I'll never forget what it's like when to have no idea if I can get to where I need to be.
We drove back on a very long lane to the house, and upon turning into the driveway, I got my first view of the lake. It turned out that what I was looking at was only a small bay on a very large pond or lake. The portion we fished had a dock, by which we parked, a shallow bay to the west, and a boathouse to the northwest, flanked by two wooden piers.
We fished from the bank, and my son went east while I went west. I was fishing a used Kelly's pier-boy with the pink fire tail. [Later that day, I realized that the hooks on that pier-boy had become dull. This was the first time I had ever lost fish--plural--because of dull hooks!] I took a couple of casts to the left side of the dock we parked by (of course), but then started moving west along the bank. I focused on shallow water close to what structure I could see. I didn't get any sort of bite until I moved west of the first bush that grew on the bank and into the water. There were some larger branches sticking out of the water from the bank to about ten feet into the lake. I cast from the left of the clump right beside the edge of those pieces of wood and got several bumps right away. Then, I got a big bite, and reeled in a small fish (Isn't that always the way?). This little half-pounder set the pattern for the day:
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Yeah, that's my "Franken-Boot," and I know I have a big foot, but that fish fought like hell!!
Really.
I have had these boots for many years. They were Durango Apache boots--at one time. They started falling apart around 8 years ago, but I just can't seem to be able to part from them. I took them into a cobbler's shop about 3 years ago, and he just looked at me and said, "No." I guess there just wasn't enough there for him to work with.
So, I decided to fix them myself with what I had. For leather, I used parts of old, right-handed gloves. When I buy gloves, I just put the right-hand one in a bucket! So, that's how I patched the places where the leather had worn apart. Then, I used copper wire to pull the seams back together. I tried to use glove leather to patch the soles, but they don't last long.
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As I moved to the left, I circled around the shallowest part of the bay. When I got beyond that point, I caught another small bass:
