Dudleys Diary

to the Minnesota Vikings. Well there is always next year. Had a good lunch today, fried catfish, steak and some grilled Sika tenderloins. Frank went fishing yesterday morning in his kayak on the Brazos River. He launched at the Stone Bridge at daybreak and paddled his kayak up near the dam. He was trying to catch a large Striped Bass, there are some monsters in the river. This time of the year they feed on the hatchery Rainbow Trout that they put in the river for fisherman to catch. Frank was matching the hatch with his Abu Garcia Baitcasting Reel and his Big Ugly Stick rod throwing a six inch Bomber 16J Saltwater Jointed Minnow in a Rainbow Trout pattern. He paddled and fished several miles up and down from the Stone Arch Bridge but did not get one strike. When you are trophy fishing that is the way it is most of the time. You fish hoping for that one big strike. Frank said he jumped a lot of ducks off the water and watched them fly and saw several get shot down by duck hunters hidden off to the side of the river. He quit going up river when he rounded a bend and watched an unseen hunter drop a duck that fell about 90 feet up river from his kayak. He will have to go back after duck season if he wants to go up river to the cable just below the dam. On the way back to the bridge and down river a lot of the purist fly fisherman were out in full force up and down the riverbank trying to catch the small hatchery trout. Frank said most of them were pretty friendly though he did run into one asshole that was perturbed that Frank floated by in his kayak and he voiced his opinion that Frank had messed up his fishing for the day. I guess the idiot thought he was on a private trout stream in Montana fishing for wild trout and not on a public river in Texas catching eight inch long hatchery trout released a few days earlier that have never eaten anything other than floating fish food out of a paper bag.