I had some errands to run this morning, and decided to take time today to do some maintenance to some of the local spots we fish. First stop... a private spot we fish called the "Hidden Pond". The entrance gate was literally falling down, and it looks as if someone had been picking it up off the hinge pins and going in. Here's a few pics of it prior to repairs, a couple of pics of the pond that is wwaayyy down in the woods, and the repairs gate as snn on the way out...
Bottom hinge totally off the peg on the LH side... This gate is HEAVY. If you pick it up off the pin, one person can't align it well enough to return it to the hinge.
The whole gate was on the ground and about to crash. The RH gate's top hinge was pulled totally out of the pole.
Top hinge on RH gate was pulled out of the large support pole.
I repaired the gate, and rode down to the pond to check it over. While I was there, I tossed a beetle spin a few times and picked up this little bait-size guy :-)...
Heading out, here's how the gate looks now. Let's see how long that lasts :-)
Next, I headed over to the private spot we call the "Secret Pond". I stopped in a couple of days ago to check the patch, and found lots of trash. Today, I brought some of those large DOT bags and my "picker upper" tool, and cleaned it up a bit...
It wasn't too bad, only about 1/2 bag of trash. All clean here, time to move on...
The final stop, and the worst, was at the Hwy 97 bridge overpass at Moccasin Creek. Wow, what a mess. People should be ashamed to make such a mess and leave it. We fished here recently, and it was like standing in the trash dump. The people who do this are the ones that give the rest of us a black eye. They're exactly the reason why many private spots are lost, and I can't blame the property owners! I go 2 large bags of trash, just front around the riprap at the base of the bridge. Drink bottles and cups, plates, loads of beer bottles and cans, energy drink bottles, fishing bait bags and cups, piles of fishing line everywhere, KFC and MCDonalds wrappers and packaging, swisher sweets and marlboro boxes, a huge fishing net(!!), and stuff I couldn't figure out. I mean, damn...how freakin' sorry can you get? Whatever, it's cleaned up for now. There's still enough trash up top near the guard rails of the bridge to fill 2-3 more large DOT trash bags, but that was all I could do before dark. At least the fishing area is clean for now...
