Well folks, 6 weeks after having my right knee replaced and intense physical therapy I finally felt good enough to get out and wet a line. Seeing how my new knee still not steady enough to stand on the deck of the Champion and I don’t know anyone with a pontoon style boat I knew I would be shore bound for this outing. I considered heading over to Lake Isabella but seeing how its winter and the majority of the bass are in deeper water I figured that any shore line spots that might be able to produce were not really handicap accessible.
I figured I’d give the CA Aqueduct a shot seeing how the ground is basically level and there are several spots that have quick easy access with short walking or should I say hobbeling distances to the water. So I gave a couple of my friends that live in the Antelope Valley a call to see if they wanted to hookup with me in my endeavor to finally kill my duct skunk, yes folks, in spite of the fact that I have hooked and fought a couple of them I still have yet to actually land a striper out of the aqueduct.
For those of you who are not familiar with the California Aqueduct, it’s basically a 715 mile cement river that runs from the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta in northern California and provides water to southern California. From information I’ve gathered from people that have been fishing the duct for many years and all the times I’ve fished the duct I’ve learned that the only thing predictable about duct fishing is that its very unpredictable. I have never had as difficult a time catching a fish from any body of water as I’m having with the duct.
Anyhow, seeing how this is my first trip out of town with my new right knee I realize that its completely different than when I had my left one done because of the fact that I have to press the gas and brake with my right foot and also that there is not a lot of room to just stretch it out and relax it so I end up making a few stops along the way to get out, walk a little and stretch the knee. Of course when I was on long straight stretches of the road I just set the cruise control.
After about a 90 minute drive for me we all meet at my friends house in Palmdale. We exchange greetings and did some basic BSing then we discuss our plan of attack. Seeing how I have limited mobility we knew that there were quite a few spots that we would not be able to hit because of long walks or rough terrain so we load up the truck and take off to the first spot.
Upon arrival to spot 1 we notice that the water is flowing well, which is a good sigh but there are a couple cars already sitting there. As we discuss where we go next the people show up, load up their stuff and leave so we decide to give it a try. On my second cast I get a bite, swing and a miss. We continue to work the area for about half an hour and nothing happening so we figure its time to make a move.
We arrive at the next spot and work it for about 45 minutes. One of my friends pulled up a bush that was covered with tons of tiny shrimp but other than that nothing else doing so it’s onto the next spot. The next 2 spots produced the same results. A couple hundred casts without any bites. At this point my knee is really starting to hurt so I figure its time to call it a day.
In spite of the fact that we didn’t catch any fish I still did not leave empty handed because as we arrived back at my friends house he gave me several fresh striper fillets that he had caught the day before as well as a few frozen ones that he had caught the previous week so I was able to stock up my freezer, for at least a little while. You see, the fish out of the duct are some of the cleanest, tastiest fish I’ve ever eaten and since Cindy enjoys the taste of fresh fish they don’t last long at my house.
Well all, even though we didn’t catch anything just getting outdoors and wetting a line with good friends did me a lot of good mentally. The only down side was that I might have over did it a little by spending to much time on my legs because my leg was swollen and hurt for the next several days. At the advice of my physical therapist, after spending 2 days basically on my back with my leg elevated and covered with ice the swelling went down to an acceptable level.
Thanks for visiting my site. Be sure to tell all of your fishing buddies and come back soon.
Until Next Time, Good Luck and Tight Lines To Ya!
Hi,
First off, thanks for reading my site, I appreciate it.
As to your question, yes, sadly I experience plagorism and copyright infringement as well so your not alone. Awhile back I found that several of my articles were being claimed as someone elses work. They had copied quite a few of my articles, word for word, including my tag line that I use at the end of them, and posted them in a newspaper which was online as well as a hard copy.
I just happened to stumble accross one of them online and after researching I discovered that the writer, his name just happened to be Mike as well, had at least 25 of my articles listed as his work and like I said, WORD FOR WORD.
I contacted Google with proof of my claim and dont believe they did anything so with the assistance of my lawyer I drafted a letter explaining the plagorism and sent it to the newspaper editor, who in turn questioned their outdoor writer. The editor contacted me and apologized and had their writer contact me and apologizr as well. They then edited the articles giving me credit for them as well as had me write for a colum for them.
Bottom line, to the best of my knowledge there is not alot you can do if someone steals your words, unless they use it word for word and you have a timestamp on your article. Even then its very difficult to locate them which makes it kinda tough.
Hopefully I answered your questions, if you have anymore questions feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer them.
With havin so much written content do you ever run into
any problems of plagorism or copyright infringement?
My site has a lot of exclusive content I’ve either created myself or outsourced but it seems a lot of it is popping it up all over the web without my permission. Do you know any ways to help protect against content from being stolen? I’d definitely
appreciate it.