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A few nights ago I convinced my wife to fish
North Ponds Park. It's usually not hard to convince
her to go fishing since she loves fishing almost
as much as I do. She needed convincing because
last year when we fished this pond she didn't
have much luck.
 When
we got to the water we parked the car next to
the dead railroad tracks. We didn't have to set
the rods since we left them set up from our last
trip. So we quickly started towards the pond.
It's not a far walk, maybe 50 yards at most. Up
and over the dead tracks and then past the trees
and then there it is....North Ponds Park. It is
called that because there is one more pond put
it is for swimming and not fishing.
Once we were at the water we could see that the
shoreline weeds that are normally there had been
cut down. This provided us with plenty of shoreline
to fish from. As we were watching the water we
saw a lot of surface action. The sunfish were
rising for all the bugs that were just above the
water. We got excited but before I'd let Crystal
fish I wanted to take a few pictures....got to
have photo documentation!
 We
started to fish and it was slower than we thought.
We were tossing our sperm flies and didn't have
the frequency of hits that we were expecting.
Within a few casts however I did catch a bluegill.
It was a medium sized one that had taken the fly
deeper than I could release using just my hands.
So like any good fisherman would do I reached
for my forcepts. THEY WERE GONE! This might not
seem like a big deal to most people, but for me....I
called in the blood hounds....I had to find those
forcepts. I had been given those by my father
when my grandpa passed away. I have lost those
in muddy rivers and still somehow found them.
I knew that I had to find them again. I quickly
called my wife who let me use hers to release
the fish. Once the fish was free from the hook
I started to retrace my steps. I made my way back
to the car, the whole time talking to the forcepts
as if they were human and could hear me and would
help me find them again. As I crossed the train
tracks I kept my eyes focused on the ground, looking
for anything shiney that might be my grandpa's
forcepts. I didn't see them on the ground so when
I got to the car I decided I'd better check inside
to make sure I didn't just forget them.  When
I went to open the trunk.....there they were.
Sitting on my car's trunk, perfectly lined up
as if it was a decoration that was made just for
the car. Some wonderful stranger must have seen
them and known that they were mine. I was so glad
to see that those forcepts once again had acted
like a homing pigeon and found it's way home.
With my forcepts once again secured to my clippers
I made my way back to the water where I told Crystal
the great news. I started fishing again and found
the fish were more willing to strike then they
had been a few minutes earlier. Even though the
fishing wasn't as fast as we thought it would
be based on the rising of the fish when we arrived,
but we caught probably 20+ fish each in the one
hour we fished...and I had my forcepts!!!
Author - MIKE
Date - 5/8/02
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