Windmills and Karma

Yesterday, John Chris and I went to LaSalle to fish. The lake is really big, bigger than the Braidwood lake. We had never been there before ; John and Chris were looking up fishing conditions in our area and the report said Braidwood was really good right now for striped bass on chicken livers. So John bought chicken livers and we got up before 6 am yesterday and headed south. It's not too bad a drive, but the directions from MapQuest were totally wrong once we had gotten off the express way. We spent a little time being lost, but after getting directions (and breakfast) at Burger King we finally got there. As you are driving up the road towards the lake you start seeing windmills, just set in the farm fields as far as you can see in the direction across from the entrance to the lake. It was so cool! I had never seen a wind farm before, I didn't realize how big the windmills actually are. They were just kind of slowly turning in the wind, generating power for the power plant I'm guessing. LaSalle is a cooling lake too, and we could see the power plant from where we were fishing. Maybe someday there will be enough power generated from the windmills they'll be able to shut the nuclear plant down.

As far as the fishing goes, it was pretty good for some people; unfortunately I was NOT one of them. John and Chris were both catching stripers and catfish, and Chris caught a little hybrid bass, but I caught nothing. I don't know what I was doing wrong; it took me a couple of times of loosing my bait before I figured out how to get the livers to stay on the hook, but once I did I was getting lots of hits, I just couldn't land one. I did everything I could think of, I switched to a smaller hook, I used smaller pieces of bait, I set the hook sooner, and then I waited and set it later. I thought I was setting it harder but maybe it still wasn't hard enough. I don't know; there was no reason I shouldn't have landed at least one of those fish. I think it's bad karma; I was trash talking so much last year because my year started off so good that I'm paying for it now. I can't think of any other reason. John told me not to worry about it; anyone can have an off day.

Melissa went home Saturday evening. We went to the thrift store Saturday before she left and I bought a few things. More and more people are going these days and it's really essential to get there before everything is picked over. I can start riding my bike again with the warmer weather and can go first thing in the morning as often as I want.