Primal Fed

I had it all planned out, today. We just renewed our fishing licenses for 2011-2012 last night at Wal-Mart and tonight we were going to go catfishing and bring home some tasty catfish — maybe even post a recipe or two here on the blog.

I started the afternoon checking all of the gear. Catfish bait? Check. Hooks and Sinkers? Check. Rods? *SNAP*.

Merely picking up one of my rigs that I haven’t used in about six months caused the carbon rod to snap in my hand. I’ve never had this happen before with any fishing pole I’ve owned. I was glad that it happened before I had a fish on it, though. I should have taken it as an ominous sign of things to come, but instead just started planning on replacing it with a shiny new one.

We get out to the lake and set up in a nice little spot near Arkansas Nuclear One and within 5 minutes my line starts peeling off my favorite Abu Garcia rod/reel combo that I’ve had for more than 15 years. I set the hook. It was a decent sized cat for sure. The fish headed toward some submerged timber and got snagged up. *SNAP* My expensive reel came apart in my hand and within a few seconds the 60lb test line I was using broke. For those keeping score, it’s now Fish: 1, Richard: 0, Rods: -2.

Over the next hour, we managed to lose a $8 frog lure, lose another fish to snagging on timber (but managed to reel in a giant piece of timber tangled in the line), and empty the contents of an entire tackle box on the ground.

The highlight of the evening, as I was cursing my luck and wishing I never even had the idea to go out today, was to get another hit on the single pole I had left in the water. I set the hook, started reeling and landed… a map turtle.

Fortunately for the map turtle, I wasn’t feeling very hungry at this point and removed the hook and let him go on his way.

It’s just one of those days when nothing seems to go right.