Resident News Resident Fishing Stories

Resident News
Our calendar offers a
variety of outings. If
you are interested in
attending any of them, please come to
the Front Desk to sign up in our Outings
Book. The Front Desk Coordinator will be
glad to assist you.
Please be in the Lobby
15 minutes prior to the
departure time. If you need
to cancel, please call and let the Front
Desk know as soon as possible.
Lillian Alderson
Friday, August 9th, 7 a.m. -- 1 p.m.
in the Tulip Room
Items still needed.
Bake Sale: 9 a.m. in the Lobby
Lots of homemade goodies!
Please come and support our sale.
Proceeds go to the Activities Fund.
Thank you for your cooperation!
Attention, Please!
Resident Duane Nichols will be
conducting a survey to find out who is
interested in learning an activity they
don’t already know how to do: clabber,
dominoes, needlework, board games,
etc. We’ll be announcing when this
survey will take place. Thank you.
Resident Fishing Stories
Residents and
family members,
we need your input!
We try to recognize staff
members who go “above and
beyond” their duties. Please
put your comments in the box
at the Front Desk and help us
acknowledge excellence in
our staff.
My husband and I belonged to a camping club called the “Chigger
Diggers,” and we went camping year-round at our campsite at Wild
Ridge on Lake Patoka. Our friends Charlie and Helen Gibbs belonged to the
“Chigger Diggers” too, and they had the camping lot next to ours. We loved to
fish, and one summer morning we all decided to fish for catfish on the shore of
the lake. Charlie had 3 poles out and quickly got a strike, and no sooner had he
pulled the fish in, when another catfish struck one of his other lines. He
couldn’t get one fish off the line before another fish was on another line. My
husband, Helen, and I had more than 1 pole apiece, and the same thing was
happening to us. It was really comical because we never dreamed we’d catch
fish like that. We were laughing and talking, kidding with each other and
having a grand time.
When we finally stopped for lunch we tried to give away some of our great
catch, but nobody took our fish because they didn’t want to clean them. After
lunch we went back to the lake shore to see if the fish were still biting, and
they were. It was overwhelming how many fish we were catching. We decided
to set ourselves the challenge of catching 100 catfish before midnight, and we
did it! When we’d caught our hundredth fish, we were too tired to think of
cleaning them, so we packed them in ice and went to bed. The next day we
cleaned all those fish and took them home and had a big fish fry for the
“Chigger Diggers.” Naturally we got to tell our story over and over of how we
caught them, and that was almost as much fun as actually pulling in fish after
fish until we got to 100 — all in one day.
Bob Nicholson
Residents and family members, please
alert the Front Desk if you will be out
for a meal. This is one of the checks
we do to make sure you’re all right. If
you don’t come to a meal and we don’t
know you’re out, we call your first
contact to find you. Also, letting us
know that you will not be eating a meal
will enable the Dietary staff to prepare
the right amount of food and prevent
waste. Thank you for your cooperation.
Menu Meeting
with Chef Brenda
Tuesday, August 13,
at 10:30 a.m.
in the Tulip Room.
Bring your ideas!
Fishing is one of my favorite things to do. The pleasure of doing
something relaxing outdoors, the anticipation of catching a nice
fish, and the camaraderie of a fishing buddy are all reasons for me
to go out in any kind of weather and try my luck. I remember one funny thing
that happened when I was a kid and was fishing for catfish with my older
sister. She was putting a worm on her hook, but she didn’t want to use the
whole worm, so she bit the worm in two. I’ll never forget that. But my own
fishing “claim to fame” is that I think I hold the world’s record for the longest
time elapsed between casting out my lure and reeling in a fish.
It all happened when I was doing some night fishing in a neighbor’s lake and
a storm came up fast. I thought I’d make one more cast of my lure before
Resident Fishing Stories (cont’d)
4th of July Festivities
calling it quits, but when I cast, I got my line caught on my neighbor’s trotline in
the lake. Then the lightning flashed and I threw my pole down and made a mad
dash for home. The next day after church I went back to my neighbor’s lake and
rowed out in his boat to where my lure was stuck on the trotline. I got it
unhooked and threw my line toward the bank where my pole was. It fell short
and hit the water instead. I rowed back to the bank, picked up my rod, began
reeling in my line and discovered that a nice 7-pound bass had struck my lure.
So from the time I cast my lure the night before, to the time I was able to reel in
my line the next day, it was 12 hours and 37 minutes. Now this is a true fish
story (every detail) except the last minor detail about the size of the bass. I
don’t think he was quite a pound.
Dorothy Kiefer
First of all, this is a true story, but it didn’t happen to me. I was
just a spectator. My dad and I were fishing for crappie on Long Pond
in Patoka. We were sculling along one side of the bank in a johnboat , and another boat was fishing off the other bank. Two young
couples were in the boat, and although they were pretty far away,
their voices carried well across the water. Suddenly the two women started
screaming in terror. We turned our boat around so we could see, thinking
someone must have fallen in the water because their little boat was overcrowded.
The two women were standing up in the boat, screaming, and the two men were
trying frantically to do something with the oars. A big limb of a huge old tree
growing on the bank hung out over the water above their boat. Two huge, black
snakes, as big around as a man’s arm, had been fighting in the tree and had fallen
into their boat from the big limb. They were probably water moccasins -poisonous snakes — and they were still fighting in the bottom of the boat.
We were astounded and sat watching from our boat. We were too far away to
do anything, but we could see and hear pretty well. The men were trying to scoop
those big snakes over the side of the boat with their oars, but the slippery snakes
kept sliding off. We were holding our breath, wondering if the snakes would bite
anyone. We couldn’t believe those big snakes had fallen at least 20 feet from the
tree limb into the little, crowded boat and hadn’t landed on top of someone.
Fifteen tense minutes passed, with the women still screaming, but at last the men
managed to get the snakes over the side of the boat into the water. The young
people were pretty shook up and headed off as soon as they’d gotten free,
probably to the boat landing. I doubt if they had any stomach left for fishing, but
they certainly had a terrifying tale to tell of their fishing adventure.
Happy Hour at the Beach