Went up to Oklahoma and went fishing with my two brothers and was very appreciative of them working around my schedule.
Some of you may remember that my older brother, Kenny, had some really major surgery last fall, which by the way, has him back in fine shape. You have no idea how good that is to see. He had been pretty sick over the last 7 or 8 years, and wasn't able to go fishing or do much of anything else for most of that time. So that, primarily, and among other reasons, one being that we haven't done it in so long, is what made this "weekend" so special.
We got up at 5 am after being up until about 2 am
to head out to the lake, with Kenny's daughter, Emily, going along. What a gem of a young lady she is. We fished until about 11 am, when it was getting too hot to stay out there, and Kenny schooled us. No pun intended. 
We caught around 45, and I would estimate that Kenny caught 30 of them.
My younger brother, Randy, caught the biggest fish of the day, which was a Black (large mouth) Bass, but we let that one go because the big ones tend to be wormy when it's this warm, or that's what they told me anyway. We were and always are in it for Crappie. I managed to catch the two biggest Crappie, out of the 3 fish I did catch. How? I don't know.
None of them were great big, but Crappie, being in the perch family don't get that big to begin with, but they sure are good to eat.
Randy and Emily each caught an Alligator Gar, which is technically a fish, but I wouldn't call it one, they're so fucking ugly. So actually, those were the biggest, each probably weighing in at 8 pounds, but we don't count those.
We fished under a bridge, and there was a big bird (Great Blue Heron) standing on the riprap just watching us, and I had no idea why he would just stand there like that for so long. But when Kenny or Randy would catch a fish, not big enough to keep and small enough for the bird to eat, they would toss it over to him, and he would gulp it right up. That was kind of incredible, because that bird must have eaten 10 of those in the 5 hours we fished and never left to take a dump.
That was round one, and was just a great event. Let me say that Kenny's daughter, Emily, was just a gem on this trip. She's a good fisherman in her own right, but just didn't have any luck this particular morning. She was fishing with an old Zebco reel, that kept coming apart on her when she would get a bite, and tried to reel it in, and every time the fish got away. Randy eventually fixed the reel, but by that time it was late in the morning and the fish had stopped biting.
We went back to Kenny's house and Randy, the electric knife guru he is, had the fish filleted in no time, which are now frozen and ready for a fish fry, soon to come.
Kenny and Randy napped the afternoon away while I went to visit my dad and others I don't get to see very often.
We decided we would go for round two later in the evening when it had cooled down, which turned out to be not so much fun. We headed out to the lake around 8. Had to stop by the bait shop and by the time we got there it was around 9. We launched the boat, with propane lanterns aboard and headed to the same bridge. When we got close, we lit one of the lanterns so we could see how to anchor the boat, as there was no moon or any other light around besides the ones on the boat. When I lit the lantern, I was inundated with a swarm of bugs that you would only see in a Stephen King movie. They swarmed to the light and me, to a really ridiculous point. I had never been in such a cloud of flying bugs in my life, and it was kind of freaking me out. Evidently it was their time, because we've never seen anything like that in our night fishing trips in the past.
We got the boat anchored and put the lanterns on stanchions, as high as we could get them, but the bugs were just all over us. Through all of that, we stayed until 1 am, catching only one fish, and losing a rod & reel to another fish that jerked it off the boat before we could react. We hauled it in at that point, and drove back to the boat ramp, loaded up and went back to Kenny's house, where I immediately jumped in the shower to get any traces of those fucking bugs off of me. I'm sure nightmares will follow.
While the second trip was an utter disaster, I would do it all again tomorrow, just to fish with my brothers again.
My two brothers. Randy & Kenny, left to right. Two of the best people you would ever meet.
Ever seen whiter legs than that?
Here's our buddy, the most appreciative, Great Blue Heron. Look hard, he kind of blends into the rocks.
