THE POND

The last day of June and I am up early, watching the sun begin its climb, realizing it is going to be one of those memorable Wisconsin summer days, sunny and rather cool.

Last thursday, I put a band together to play at Carson Park's great baseball diamond, prior to a 7:30 P.M. start of a Cavaliers game. It had been a while since I had surrounded myself with musicians of quality: Tim Kielholtz ("Too Tall") on bass, good old Mikey Richson playing lead guitar on a Gretsch Tennessean that I traded a couple of acoustic guitars for several years ago, through a recently refurbished 1961 vintage Silvertone twin twelve amplifier that Derrick at Speed of Sound put back together for me -- and Derrick -- it really sounds sweet as honey! -- Dave "Barney" Barneson on drums, and one of my oldest and best friends on keyboards, Tommy "Weiner" Wieseler.

As we were setting up on the cement slab down the first base line, Tom got to telling me about THE POND.

He lives down Strum/Cleghorn way, and has gleaned permission from an adjacent land owner to fish in a pond planted with blugill, bass, and northern pike. He tells me they have fished it several times, each time bringing home a bucket of blugills about the size of your hand.

So on this beautiful last day of June, I have made arrangements to give THE POND a whirl. What's really cool is that because it is on privately owned land, you can fish it without a fishing license.

I drive down to the house, we throw the gear in Tom's wagon and drive the 1/4th mile to the entrance way, jimmy the big swinging gate, and drive right down to the edge of the water where there is a small dock.

Since Tom has last fished here in May, the warm weather has encouraged a tremendous growth of algae, the perfume of which hits us squarely in the face as we disembark from the station wagon.

Fishing with red worms, it isn't long before Gabe, Tom's teenage son, nails a really healthy (see photo) blugill. It is a typical fishing outing where one person is "hot", catching fish after fish, in this case, Gabe, while Tom and I mostly stand around and take the ribbing that is dished out.

I do find out that there is another species present when I catch a small yellow perch.

We fish for an hour, throwing our booty into a water filled cooler. Then begins the discussion about who is going to clean the fish, who knows how to fillet, who has a sharp fillet knife, and in the end, the fish are given a reprieve and tossed back into the pond to fight another day.

It is perhaps for the best. Something tells me that the flesh of our catch would have been mushy and would have tasted of algae.

Sure was fun, though.