Desert Eagle wrote:
Hi Folks, We had a good weekend for the most part. Friday night Theresa and Amanda "Informed" me that "We" were heading up to the mountains and go camping and fly fishing. I was also informed that we would leave about 7 AM Saturday. Saturday arrived, I was up as normal at about 4 and had the truck loaded by 6. We headed out and the first stop was an 85 year old Vet who had run out of gas just north of Artesia. We got on the Ham radio and a buddy of ours about 8 miles away had a gas can so by 9 and a lot of nice conversation he was back on the road and so were we. We arrived at Bonito Lake about 11:30 and were heartbroken. The lake was low, we could have handled that, but there were bait fisherman arm to arm all the way around it. We sat and watched one person wading and fly fishing around some reads and he caught a nice trout. As soon as he did about 40 "Bait" fisherman waded in and basically surrounded him so badly he couldn't even cast. He was so disgusted he packed it in. Worst part is, ( and Amanda counted this), in the parking area there were 55 Texas License plates to every 1 New Mexico and not a game warden 1 checking licenses. It was horrendous. We left the lake and headed back into the National Forest to find a place to camp. 23 miles later and still no sign of an open spot, again Texas has infected the forest, we found a spot that was far enough away from everyone to set up the tent. We were unloading the truck when a pick up with about 6 "Non English Speaking" men pulled up, started yelling at us to "Vamoose" and making threatening gestures. We packed it up and drove another 10 miles into the forest with the same results. About 5 we decided that this was fruitless and headed back out to try and find some other place to camp. No luck. We drove back home and stayed here last night and got up this morning to try again. We arrived at Grindstone Resivour about 10:30, a small 100 +/- acre lake. It was worse than Bonito, and the license plate count was much worse, in fact, we were the only one of 2 NM plates and the 3+ acre parking area was crammed. We went down to check the Rio Riodoso river and every entry point was congested with the same results. Needless to say we wasted a lot of gas and $$ we didn't have, but I smiled the whole time so Amanda and Theresa would not get discouraged. None of us ever got to wet a line. I did manage to see a Deputy on the way out. Stopped and ask him if he would mind contacting the Game and Fish folks to see if they might want to do some "License Checking" at the lakes. He point blankly stated" Are you absolutely crazy, we don't mess with them when we are outnumbered, you just have to find another place to fish". I honestly could not believe the remark, but guess that is just the way it is. Amanda told me on the ride home, ( 3.5 hours), that "She was going to save up enough so we could go north and find a place to fish". My kind of kid, never gives up, just looks at options.
Hope others did better than we this weekend. Tired, hot and worn out, Jimi
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