Who’s Dumb ?

Sitting here I’m watching an angler on this bright crisp morning dry-fly fishing by the footbridge across the pond outside our window. He’s also ground-baiting, throwing handfulls of breadscraps onto the water in the general area. The kids feed the fish off that same bridge most days – tilapia, sun-fish, catfish, whatever. The Kingfisher and Herons make the most of the opportunities from the bridge hand-rail too. What of it.

I’d mentioned to a serious-angler colleague a couple of weeks ago about how much fishing there was locally, on ponds / lakes as well as the Tennessee river and its backwaters, and how often people seemed to catch significant fish on at least two out of three casts – Bass and Catfish as big as your leg, or forearm at any rate. Too easy, where’s the sport if the fish are that plentiful and dumb ?

He recalled a story of fishing near his previous home on lake Ontario, where huge Carp and Bass seemed to congregate near a power station warm cooling water outlet, and consequently many anglers also congregated. (I had similar experiences at the outlet from the Guntersville dam earlier this year.) The profusion of fish and bait, including ground-bait, seemed to be self-reinforcing. The more people fished, the more fish there were. Eager fish would even intercept baited hooks or thrown ground-baits before they hit the water. 

Fishing-fest or feeding-frenzy ? 

(BTW the dry-fly guy doesn’t seem to have had a bite yet.)

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