Trout at the Zoo

Thought of fishing the neighborhood pond tomorrow evening, and then changed my mind during a Facebook exchange with a friend, looked over my shoulder, and grabbed my St. Croix already rigged with a spinnerbait. I knocked the bass out using this one just a couple of weeks ago.

I could have turned around and come home, reminded by the looks that the pond has since weeded in. I could have then rigged up with a weightless Chompers rigged with an inset hook, but why not a little folly to remind me of how good fishing can be? Besides, I began casting actually thinking a bass would loom up behind and hammer the lure down. Just the matter of dodging algae would bring a quick result. I can't remember getting skunked at this pond since 1999.

Did get a follow. A big wake behind the spinner's wake. Also spooked a few. One of them, a big one, reacted to my Power Pro braid line nearly running across its back as I retrieved. The fish hung right at calm surface.

I woke at 4:30 this a.m. and went trout fishing on the Lamington, where a 14-inch rainbow hit my Muddler Minnow stripped across the surface and creating a V-wake. I quickly released the trout. Making a presence at the surface seemed the only thing to do with the water muddied, though not thoroughly muddied, but I tried one more option by tying on a big, bodacious streamer with a red head of fuzz I could hardly cast--wind resistant. The tapered leader just didn't want to lay out straightly, but that fly drew three strikes before I had to soon leave for work, including the roll from a rainbow that had to be 18 inches.

After pedaling my bike to the Bedminster dog park this afternoon to meet my wife and friends, I stopped at the Zoo on the return loop. Here, the North Branch is in much better shape than was the Lamington at dawn. Quite a few trout got caught; I learned by posing the question.

At least it used to be AT&T World Headquarters. I'm not perfectly clear on whether or not the AT&T facility, which the Zoo appropriately fronts, remains so, but global communications it is, and a springtime menagerie of participants of all racial descents and many national colors got named by a good friend not after any zoo in particular, so let's just say the peculiar word that prefixes the study of animals, including the apex predator who uses reason and not only sense, includes the both of us and our fishing here quite a bit--with a full cognizance of the company's significance.

AT&T, I applaud you. I've heard bells ringing all my life. The memory never fades of how a telephone used to sound off, and I never dreamed that one day, I would walk into the Bell Labs facility at Murray Hill, New Jersey, employed as a temp, and not only--but especially--stand in awe of a statue of the inventor. And besides this unforgettable moment, be introduced for the first time to email in May 1994.

Of course, it's all useless if there's nothing worth saying.

And did you think anthropology trumps zoology, as if the human species is excluded from the latter? It's the Garden State that reminds me of a line from Pink Floyd's "Dogs," on the Animals album, about reaping the harvest you've sown.