MAN DAY 2014, Part 1

My son Kevin lives here in Colorado with me and goes to school here. In the summer he travels to South East Florida every year to visit his mom. This is good and bad. Its good cause I love having him here for school, bad because he misses out on all the summer fishing. So to counter balance the fishing he misses out on every summer we take a day (MAN DAY) each spring (so long as his grades in school are kept up) and we play hooky from school and work to spend a whole day fishing. Last year Kevin caught a tank of a Largemouth bass (9+lbs). But this year is different. 1) We are taking a very large family vacation this year and I will be using up most of my time off from work. 2) Our fishing partner and Co Pilot in all things MANLY and AWESOME Justin Peterson was not going to be able to go when we planned. So we improvised. Instead of not going at all we decided to do Two man days this year. One in the spring on a Saturday, and another in August when Kevin comes home that Justin will be able to go on. WIN, WIN! So we set off last weekend to go on an adventure. We choose the Hale Ponds on the South Fork of the Republican River. 40 miles south of us. The ponds are part of the South Republican State Wildlife Area. Public water that holds bass, crappie, bluegills, carp, and some stocked trout. Our goal was bass and carp mostly but when its man day you don't really care what you catch. We saw some bass, missed a couple shots a some carp, caught a couple trout, and some bluegills. Plus we ate some lunch by the ponds, shared a root beer, and had a pretty damn good father son time. The ponds were very healthy and well maintained thanks to hard work from our state wildlife offices and money from the Habitat Stamp program. So thank you goes to them. There was quite a few anglers around enjoying the ponds as well. The highlight of the day came when we were on our way home. We stopped at a bridge that crossed over the Republican river. I like to stop and look over the sides of bridges (call me weird). Now we had been after carp all day and only seen a couple. So you can imagine my surprise when I peeked over the rails of the bridge and spotted 2 big bronze pigs swimming right under the bridge. I ran to the other side only to see 8 more carp swimming the other direction. There were carp everywhere. The land on both sides of the bridge are public fishing land under a wildlife easement. So we grabbed our rods and tried to get in a few shots. Needless to say we were rejected. It was early afternoon, and hot. The fish were in a cruising mode and not feeding. But they were all around us. So even though we didn't have an epic day at the ponds we did discover a new and plentiful carp fishery in the process. You can bet I will be back on the creek this summer, fly rod in hand. Chasing those brutes. Until then though, get out and go fishing. The water is warming up quickly, the bass will be in pre spawn very soon. And take a kid or two with you. It doesn't have to be man day to enjoy some quality time with young anglers.