One Fish, Two Fish, BIG Fish

I apologize for the delay in posts. I promise to get our family vacation photos up soon. You see, I have been suffering with some pain since we returned. First I couldn't use my left arm due to pain in my forearm and elbow. When that finally cleared up late last week, I began having severe pain in my right wrist. So much so that I had Jim take me to the ER early Saturday morning...only to have the doctor say, "I don't know what it is. Go see an orthopedic." I seriously wanted to punch him in the face when they presented me with a $200 ER bill as I left.

Tomorrow afternoon I hope to get a few answers. So, please say a little prayer for me.

I have had the following pictures loaded to the blog since last week waiting for the commentary to be written.  I hope you will understand why this is going to be short and sweet!

Back in early April, Jim and I made a trip to our local feed store to buy fish for stocking our new pond.  The pond was dug last year during the drought and it had taken it that long to fill up enough to support its own ecosystem.

Brianne getting ready to introduce the catfish to their new home.
Those plastic bags held 50 catfish each...so you get an idea of their size.

This was one of the little devils before it took off for deep water.  You can see its size in relation to the blades of grass growing in the shallows beneath him.

Jim has been faithfully feeding every evening since we stocked the pond.  I love to go out with him and watch them eat.  Over the past month or so, the catfish have begun to 'skim' across the top of the water with their mouths open to take in more food.  They looked to have put on some size since stocking day, but they swarm the food so fiercely that it is hard to get a good look at them.

We had three boxes of night crawlers left over from our vacation trip to Lake Conroe, so Jim and I decided to take a fishing pole out to the pond on Thursday evening to see if we could catch anything. 

I don't know if you can see it very well in this picture or not, but there is a cork floating out in front of Allie.

Allie is NOT a water dog.  She is a yellow mountain cur and usually you cannot get her to get her paws in the water.  But, when she figured out that fish were coming up on the other end of that line, she would nearly swim out to it in hopes of being the one to catch the fish first.

We caught one each, though we didn't get a picture of mine before letting it go.  So, when Jim brought his in I made sure to snap a picture of it with his phone.

Look how fat that little fellow is!   We didn't have anything with us to measure him while we out at the pond, but Jim took a measurement of the tailgate when we made it back to the house.

His fish was over 12" long!  They still have a little bit more to grow to be table sized, but they are certainly big enough for the grandchildren to have some fun out on the pond.  We can hardly wait!