More Fishing Stuff
Posted by Pete | Posted in News | Posted on 07-08-2010
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You boys from Mississippi and Alabama don’t have trouble finding a fishing hole, eh, with water in it, eh, and fish in it. So, you grab your pole, head for the favorite fishing hole and probably catch a mess of fish most of the time and be heading home before us New Mexico boys arrive at our hole. But, out here in New Mexico we only have water in our holes when it rains, for the most part…You know what I mean…Out here you can be driving down a major New Mexico Highway and you pass a sign that says, “Watch for Water”….That is probably one of our major streams when it is raining, dry the rest of the time…Dang old fish won’t stay around without a healthy dose of water…So, we have to hunt for the fishing holes with year round water…Once that has been done you have to figure out if there is any fish in that particular hole..The best way to do that is to read the paper and they tell you when they are stocking a hole with fish. Sometimes they tell you what kind of fish, how many and what size….Now that helps a lot…Only thing, we got about 2 million people living in New Mexico and five or six nice holes…You read in the paper that Tingley Beach is gonna be stocked and you drive off down that way, folks all over the banks and that is good…somebody is gonna catch one or two..You holler at them, “Say, what bait are you using.” He hollers back , “Corn”…So you put on salmon eggs cause you know he is lying….Corn ain’t red…Well, we don’t have the mosquitoes or the chiggers or the water moccasins out here because we are so dry, but on the other hands, we ain’t got many fishing holes either….You remember me telling you about my neighbor losing gold fish out of her pond to that dang old hawk and now that he has met his demise, her pond is alive again with gold fish and a few other fishes….I kinda been tempted to wonder off over there after dark and making a couple of cast into the fish pond….Aw heck, I can’t do that..She has all them dang fish named and some of our neighbors would tell on me, I just know they would….”Pete went home hauling Wilbur, I saw him over there last night”…..Shoot, I’ll just look for me a good hole…..
In New Mexico, it looks like it may be easier to just stock one’s bathtub and go fishing there. While I was in New Mexico, I had friends who fished regularly, namely for trout; but I never bothered. The fishing holes and streams were too far away to get to by bicycle.
Well, our fishing is not like Arkansas, but we do have more spots than you might think. Depending on where you live determines how far you have to drive. The Rio Grande and the Peco run north and south through the state and those two streams creates some lakes and some river fishing. The Gila, San Juan and Animas, The Canadian, Rio Chama and a few others provide most of our fishing opportunities. But we fish the small streams as well….
I thought all streams in New Mexico were small. At least, I never saw any large ones. I remember the first time that I saw the Rio Grande in Albuquerque. A friend from the base gave me my first tour of downtown Albuquerque, including Albuquerque Old Town and the River. As we drove across the river, my friend pointed out that this was the famous Rio Grande River. I asked where is the water? This was in August. The first time I saw the Jemez and the Pecos in northern New Mexico, I thought that I was dreaming that I had went to sleep and awoke near the branch stream in my father’s pasture in Coal Fire that he had used to irrigate the cornfield a few years earlier. What a place? They actually called this a river out here. It was refreshing compared to the blowing “Enchantment” though.
Well, if you are looking for Mississippi and Missouri type rivers, even Sipsey, forget it. We don’t have the water but then neither do we have the bugs the water brings, so it is somewhat of a swap. We enjoy sitting outside on a summer evening or a summer morning and so far, most years, bugs are not a problem. But to answer you, you are correct…all our streams are small….
No bugs! Especially, no mosquitoes! That is one of the main things that I liked about Albuquerque and the New Mexico area. There were even no biting knats. This made bicycling over the New Mexico terrain very nice. The second thing I liked about the climate was very early when i realized my sweat glands seemed not to be working properly, or, so I thought. Just a few months earlier, I had cycled across the campus at the University of Alabama and became completely wet with perspiration. In New Mexico, I could cycle 10 miles and still be completely dry. I wondered what had happened to my sweat glands, until I started to rub crystallized salt from my skin. At that time, I started to take salt tablets, at least before biking, playing tennis and hiking. It took about a year before becoming fully acclimated to the climate. After that, I really loved it, and miss it to this day. I just wish that I could get my wife acclimated.
Some people never like our part of the world…You ever do or you don’t…very seldom an inbetweener. Aunt Noit and Mom do not like it..Dad never said to me what he felt…I think Sambo would have stayed if he could have found a decent job…After a few years I fell in love with this part of the world and I would never want to leave it….
Sam may have stayed if he had been able to find a decent job, but I doubt if Joyce would have. She was too much in love with north Alabama.
Aw, I don’t know….She seemed to like it fairly well. They lived in Indiana many years….