I went a bit early to the pond today and looked down and there was Hotdog! I am so glad he is alive and I didn't see any teeth marks on him. The wind is blowing a bit and everything cruddy in the pond is blowing right to that corner though, so he was real dirty. It's hard to tell if he has any marks because of the pond scum. I bet those pesky raccoons tried to get him and he escaped! Maybe tomorrow I'll catch him a nice fish for lunch! How on earth I'm going to give it to him I have no idea...The rest of the larger bass and bluegill are pretty much still hanging back pretty far except for Meanandlean who came right up for his worms. He brought a pal with him today and he didn't try to run him off. I kinda remember that smaller bass hanging out with him in the past. He acts a lot like Meanandlean so I guess I'll just call him Mini Meanandlean. He wanted worms too and sat there gazing and shrugging off any attempts to feed chunks of hot dogs.
Meanandlean was being a real pain and if I didn't wiggle the "worm" just right he wouldn't take it. After a bit he decided that those hot dog worms weren't real worms after all and he wasn't going to eat them any more. Well, it's just too bad then. I decided it would just be a long cold winter for one skinny fish that is a lousy hunter then... He needs to start thinking about fattening up for the winter as the fish won't be coming to the surface for feed so I won't be there. Who knows what next Spring will bring and who will have survived.You can always click on the photos to enlarge them. After staring up at me pitifully for about an hour I got aggravated with Meanandlean and started throwing chunks of hot dogs near him so the bluegills would get around him so maybe he could catch one of those and leave me alone. I had already run out of hot dog "worms" and wasted most of them (you can see three he wasted floating around him that he was too fickle to eat). That's Mini Meanandlean to his right in the photo by the way taking "Piti Me Too" lessons from Meanandlean. Well, anyway, I kept at it because I had had enough of his begging and low and behold Meanandlean ate a chunk of the hotdog - then ate another! He ate three pieces total then swam off with a disgusted look on his face... HA! I feel I've finally won something!
Now it's not even been a week since Meanandlean has been eating but I've put two photos of him together and look what a change in him:
You almost can't tell he's the same fish but that's him all right! I still wonder what makes him such a poor hunter and the others do ok? How did he get as big as he is to begin with even? You know I always see him trying to go after the really small bluegill too and never see him try to take any larger ones that I know he's big enough to handle. He's always trying for little bitty ones about an inch or two long. I wonder if he got finned a few times or something and had a bad experience? Maybe I need to build him his very own pond with nothing but placid little lazy goldfish - NAH!Well, I need to go shopping - until tomorrow!
