Fish ponds and fishing again

My Fish Pond

I have many interests among other things I like natures, traveling, reading, as well as some heavy stuff like religion and philosophy, you name it. Rather weird eh… but right now I will write about fishing.

The sight of fishes swimming and playing in the water always entailed me. I have a small fish pond at the back of my house where I keep some catfish and few local species. To dig this 40 feet by 80 feet pond I hired a ‘back hoe’ and with luck water came naturally from below filling the pond with clear and clean water at the height of about 3 feet or so.

Fishes have many predators and often I’ve been struggling to keep these fish porches away from the pond. From the sky above, usually the kingfisher and stokes frequented the pond and from land the big lizards. The real menace was the lizards. Although I managed to kill few of the lizards they keep coming back.

I had improvised some techniques to catch these lizards. The simplest one was using a rope with loosely knotted nose. I placed several of these ropes with one end tied to a stake or simply fastened to the fence at some strategic places where the lizards would pass by before entering the fish pond.

I had managed to catch a few of these lizards alive this way but a few of them just died before I got to them the next day. As I have said other lizards kept coming back to the pond. With the birds I have no problem keeping them at bay. I managed to catch a few kingfishers just by setting trap gum on the stakes near the pond. However I would set the birds free again after mending their gummed feathers.

Back to Japan. I noticed that not many kids fish in Japan at least in the vicinity of Yoshinokawa in Tokushima. Everyday when I passed by this Yoshino river on my way to the University of Tokushima, I could see few anglers mostly adults fishing on the river side.

A particular angler I encountered over the bridge of the Yoshino bridge was an old man. Some anglers in the boat on the water below the bridge were also old folks. Hardly any kids were around.

Many years back I had the opportunity fishing in the suburb of Chicago where I studied at a University there, and I noticed that the kids there took up fishing seriously. In fact they attended fishing clinics at various locations.

I support any kind of fishing enthusiasts and any legal authorities on them or the like. The one called the Urban Fishing Program introduced by the state of Illinois had objectives which include, teaching individuals of all ages to fish, to provide better local fishing opportunities, and to give participants an understanding of and a greater appreciation for natural resources.

The Program main attraction consisted of free summer fishing clinics that included fishing at a nearby stocked pond. The only difference in Illinois you still need license to fish albeit later a new funding package known as “Fish Illinois” was created and that was supported by a fishing license fee increase too.

Many tackle shops sell live baits as well as lures of various kinds in Chicago. For baits, the live wrigglers and the night crawlers were among the popular hook up there. One for sure you need to buy fishing license with issuance date endorsed by the authorities obtainable at any tackle shops in Illinois. Not so in Japan as I fish for free even at the piers and at the beach. See http://www.ifishillinois.org.