It's time to tell the story of one of my favorite fish catches I have ever seen. Let's set the scene. It's Christmas circa 2016. We have a tradition in my family where the men of the household go fishing in between Christmas parties. This particular year, we decided to go to a neighborhood pond. The weather was around 65 degrees and had been for the previous couple days. Being a neighborhood pond, it wasn't to difficult catch fish. All of us were having a grand old time catching fish.
I had caught probably 5 or 6 fish. This is where the story gets good. I had made a bad cast trying to parallel the bank. Fish in this pound like to sit shallow in less than a foot of water and less than a foot from the bank. I tried to make a cast down the bank. I was using some sort of Texas rig and I don't remember what bait exactly. Me being the dunce that I am, my bait landed three or four inches from the water on the bank. As I started walking towards my bait, mad at myself for making a bad cast, I see an explosion of water right in front of my bait. A bass had jumped out of the water, ate my Texas rig, and flopped back in the water. In disbelief, I set the hook and the fight was on. I landed my fish and looked around to see my father or my brother had witnessed what happened. My brother, Erik, had witnessed the whole thing. The fish was only about a pound, but today lives as legend in our family.
To this day, that fish still gets talked about seven years later. "Hey remember that time you casted on the bank and caught a fish!" I cannot say I have heard of another instance of this happening. It certainly has not happened to me again. I hope this story finds you well and I look forward to telling more stories in the future.
Tight lines and as always, Love the Adventure!
- Paul Hoffman