"Eff this, I'm going to the pond," I said after my Zoom call with her.
The second expedition of the year! After a heroic lunchtime escape from the clutches of my desk, I found myself back at the pond, ready to hammer on any fish foolish enough to swim near my bait. As I walked down, half the population of East LA was shoulder to shoulder along the shoreline, and then I put two and two together.
"F*ck!! They stocked."
•
Stocking day at Probation Pond brings out all the yokels and the cormorants. It's almost like they have an advanced method of communication so that when the truck pulls up, they come flying in with all their relatives and offspring, snatching up as many trout as they can. And I'm not talking about the cormorants.
Let me tell you about a few other characters that are involved in this tragic comedy.
• The Poacher
This is the guy with the 12 rods tossed out and the 13th next to his side rigged with an egg sinker and a 5/0 treble hook, who catches 5 trout, runs them up to his car, and then comes back for more. This guy has been fishing for 40 years, yet has never purchased a license, and regales you in stories about catching undersized lobster and abalone out of season. And, when he fishes for bass, his favorite baits are either live bluegill that he catches on a sabiki rig, or what he calls, "bucket shad," which are feeders that he purchases at the local Petsmart.
• The Pro
This is the guy who has several 800 dollar custom rods and matching Shimano Stellas and uses said combos to chase trucker trout. They have a spoon rod, a mini jig rod, a power bait rod...They will regale you in stories of them catching double digit Frankenstein fish from our local ponds and Put and Takes, but has never been to the Sierras. They bring more tackle than people bring to Barrett, and use a $15 abalone finish spoon from Japan, when a $5 Kastmaster would suffice. I think these guys put the stocking schedule on their Google Calendar, and stay real busy in the Winter, like accountants in April.
• The Influencer/Brand Ambassador
This is the dude with 'sponsors' who they get free baits from if they splash the Internet with their sponsors' brand and products. They will catch a fish with a 50 cent mini jig, land it, remove the jig and place their sponsors' product in the fish's mouth, and take 100 pictures. Those pictures are online within 5 minutes of the fish being landed. The Influencer is on all facets of social media, including FishBrain, and probably shed a tear the other day when Tik Tok closed down. They have 25 combined followers, and that's including their immediate family. Their favorite saying is, "Don't forget to Like and Follow!"
• The 'I Only Throw Swimbaits' Guy
"How do you know how much a Swimbaiter's swimbait cost?"
"How?"
"Don't worry, talk to them for 2 minutes and they'll tell you, without you having to ask."
These dudes come out of hibernation around the same time the first trout make their migration from the hatchery to the hood, and then you never see them again, kinda like the Perseid meteor showers.
If you ask them how many bass they've caught, they'll respond with how many 'follows' they got instead.
And of course, nobody has ever seen them catch anything.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
•
And then there's me. The weird "Bass Guy" which I'm affectionately known as, who fishes for bass even though there are trout throwing themselves at your feet.
That day, I moseyed up next to the trout guys and watched them do their finely choreographed dance. Anytime someone would catch one, they'd all move over to that area. Then another person would catch one 100 feet down, and they'd all migrate to that area. I used this to my advantage, as someone had caught a trout a few feet down from me, and all moved away from my last spot that I usually hit up before going back home to do work.
I pitched my bait next to some man made structure, and I was retrieving the bait so slowly that I was having a full on conversation with the Head of Operations for the park (aka, the guy that gets called when a duck is dead in the pond) and he had been mentioning that he hadn't seen anybody catch a bass in months. As he's saying this, I get a nice thunk on that first cast and I swing and I immediately know it's a good one, at least for these parts. For a second, I think I've hooked a catfish that survived the summer stocking by wearing his winter coat.
"Think it's a good one, Mike,"I said under my breath, not wanting to attract attention. At this place, you tend to keep specific baits to yourself.
And then I knew it wasn't a catfish when I saw my Sunline going upwards quickly.
"don't jump don't jump don't jump."
And, it jumps.
Which of course, catches the attention of the stocker trouters.
The fish ended up weighing 5.2 on the scale, and it was weighed because some of the guys that had surrounded me thought it was a 'ten pounder' and I wanted to show them their eyes were bigger than the scale I had.
"Yeah? I'll call you back. My arm is in a cast."
As I released it, the trout fisherman elbowed each other as they all migrated towards the spot, and began casting away, hoping to catch their own 5 pounder.
Good 2nd Pond Fish of the Year
Dealing with Edna from Accounting was easier when I got home, that's for sure.
