Fishing on a gorgeous, fall day

I went fishing on Monday. The pond south of Lamoni, two miles north of the Missouri state line. It was unusual to fish in short sleeves in early November in Iowa, but it was a gorgeous day – 66 degrees, almost no breeze, bright sun. The pond is about two-and-a-half acres, nestled in a protected area, so the light southwest wind didn’t disturb us at all. The pond surface was like glass.

Lamoni sits in southern Decatur County. The pond is adjacent to the five-acre former home site of my late brother, Tom and his wife, Vikki. They built their beautiful home on the site in 2005 and lived there until Tom died in October of last year. After a few months, Vikki moved back to Ames, the city where they had previously lived.

Vikki and I have long been fishing buddies at the pond. I helped teach their son Joel to fish at Lake Panorama when he was in early grade school – he now catches big ones year-round on a large lake near Cooperstown, New York, where he and his wife live and work at Glimmerglass Opera.

The pond south of Lamoni is stocked, courtesy of Vik, with bass, bluegill and crappie, along with a few huge grass carp (white amur). The game fish grow to impressive size as well, and we anticipated lively fishing indeed on a beautiful November day.

We caught two.

They were both bluegill, one of adequate size and the other somewhat smaller. (Mine was the larger one.) We fished for three hours, using nightcrawlers, both on the pond bottom and dangling below a bobber.

A brace of bluegill was certainly less than we counted on. But as the old saying goes, “A bad fishing day is better than a good work day.” We are both retired, so it wasn’t as though we were sneaking away from our jobs.

Vikki has put the home and acreage up for sale. (Since I was her guest at the pond, I’ll reciprocate by noting that the listing can be found at the “Preferred Properties of Lamoni” website – look for details at 30234 U.S. Highway 69.)

When she was planning to sell the property, she wistfully said she would miss the pleasure of fishing in the pond. I replied that in the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which settled the Seven Years War (French and Indian War) between Great Britain and France, the victorious British allowed France fishing rights off the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon south of Newfoundland, islands of which France retained ownership. They still do, to this day.

I suggested to Vikki that she follow the French lead, and write a clause into her sale agreement that would give her and me fishing rights in perpetuity in the pond after the sale.

She thought that was a wonderful idea, and darned if she didn’t do just that. (As she rightly noted, she had stocked the game fish anyway.) So we can drive down to Lamoni and fish the pond whenever we wish, even though she will no longer own the house and acreage after they are sold.

Another example of the value of knowing some American history.

Decatur County ranks 99th in Iowa in several economic categories, including value of farmland. The rolling hills of the county are often better suited to grazing livestock than to growing row crops.

But land for hunting and fishing – that’s another matter. Timber and rough ground for those purposes in Decatur County are much in demand – it wouldn’t surprise me if the per-acre price of land for outdoor sports rivals the price of farmland there. There’s any number of private game preserves scattered around Decatur and its neighboring counties, with comfortable man-caves erected on them.

Decatur County sits about an hour south of Des Moines, bisected by Interstate 35. More and more metro area professionals and successful business people are acquiring untilled or partially tilled pasture and timber ground in southern Iowa for recreational purposes.

There’s a sizable community of Amish farm families in southern Decatur County around Lamoni. It added to the pleasure of Monday’s fishing day at the pond from time to time to hear a horse-drawn buggy rig clip-clopping along Highway 69 a few hundred yards away.

There are worse ways to spend an early November day in Iowa.