Neches River Fishing Trip...

 

Seems that I've noticed a groundswell of public opinion that Cathy catches all the fish. We don't really keep count even though one time she tucked a wooden child's toy abacus into the fishing pack which no matter how much longer the Arabs or the Chinese or who ever the next war is with has been doing math than we have it was nowhere near adequate to manage the numbers we're talking about. That made us pretty much abandon keeping a count but there have been occasional trips where one of us did not speak to the other one much. 

Whatever the score is I want ya'll to remember that I always pick the spot and yesterday I picked Chandler River Park to see if we could cash in on the famed Texas white bass run.  Actually the white bass were not very cooperative as the spawning run seems to be happening in waves, good one day, off the next but we did manage a nice string of yellow bass. There is no size limit or numbers restriction on the yellow bass and while they run smaller than the whites I find the meat less coarse and tasty like a panfish.    

Our favorite white bass location, River Ridge Campground on the Sabine River, is closing down this year due to the health of the owners. It has been good access but this spot is about the same distance away and there are no fees to fish. As with any public spot there can be others fishing the same area and I imagine a weekend could get crowded but everyone I met was polite and courteous more so than the average largemouth bass angler you encounter on Sam Rayburn.

Here's Cathy with the 16 yellow bass we caught. Now and then we would see someone bring in a larger white bass and people that had been further up than us had fair mixed strings but reported that waders or hip boots would be necessary to reach these areas.   

 

Good eating. I like white bass but they are a stronger flavored fish than I'm used to and there is no way I want to be thawing frozen white bass on the Fourth of July.  

Only thing was that the money I saved from the free fishing park and the fresh caught fish dinner will go toward payment of the speeding ticket I got in some podunk town that seemed to be named Cooney, Tx. The police headquarters was located in a rusty mobile home. 

About 9pm last night I noted a car speed down my little dead-end neighborhood road that's partially asphalt and road base at a high rate of speed. If you count the mailman there might be seven people drive on this road in a day so anything out of the ordinary is pretty noticeable. Right after this vehicle passed another car followed. This was more out of the ordinary so I checked out back and sure enough the last car was law enforcement with lights flashing. I stood on my back deck to see what was going down and suddenly there was laughing from the parties involved, the speeding car left and the police shortly followed.

Now I admit guilt in my traffic stop but it is a bit galling that whatever this situation it was all fun and games to the people involved while I pay a big ticket.       

Go fishing, drive slow, cook what you catch. Have a laugh with the cops and write your own blog post.