Truant Fish

This morning we had 5 fish in the Bridge Pond.  This afternoon we only had 4 fish in the Bridge Pond.  The largest and most orange fish escaped!  Escaped over Humpty Dumpty Falls... escaped from the school!

Earlier in the day I saw they were swimming just like they had when mating earlier (story here).  They were swimming in shallow areas and skootching across rocks.  I guess this truant fish just kinda skootched onto Humpty Dumpty Falls and was washed over into Joe's Pond and then washed into the skimmer pond.  Wish I could have seen that happening.

For those of you who are not aware of what pond is what or where the water falls, you can see that information by clicking on this magic word... POOFIT.

With the vagabond fish doing solo laps in the skimmer pond I felt it was my responsibility to "rescue" the creature and return her to the Bridge Pond and her compatriots. 

So just how does one go about capturing a fish in a 2000 gallon water filled hole you might ask.  I certainly did and no one had a very good answer.  "Get a net," said one lady.  "Leave it be," said a gent.  "Drain the pond and I'll grab her," said an interloper that looked strangely like a blue heron.  Catching fish by committee wasn't going to work... everyone had an idea but no one had ever actually done it before... it was all just theory.

My first idea (theory?) was to use a very large flower pot... one of those big plastic things about 2 feet high and 18 inches across the top... it even has holes in the bottom.  I found the fish was not interested in just swimming into the pot.  So I attached a long stick to the pot using screws thinking I might hold it on the bottom of the pond and when the fish swam over the pot just lift it with the fish trapped inside.  That turned out to be a pretty dopey idea. 

I decided the lady was right and I needed a net... a big net.  As odd as this may sound, I wasn't in the mood for shopping and decided to just let the creature hang out in the skimmer pond until I got around to purchasing an appropriate capture device.

I went into the house and took a nap.  You see, today is our 28th wedding anniversary and I needed my strength for tonight... We were going out (yep, it's true).  I was expected to stay awake after dinner and also drive home!  I would need a lot of rest during the day to pull that off.  So I took a nap.

I got my 40 winks and untold Z's.  When I awoke I was wondering how the truant was doing in it's new world.  I looked in the Skimmer Pond and saw water, algae, pipes, a pump, rocks and bubbles but no fish.  I considered for about a nano-second if the fish could have gone up the waterfall... not a chance.  That left the skimmer or the large flower pot that was floating in the pond.  Not a chance it was in the pot so I took the lid off the skimmer. 

Pinned to the bottom of the skimmer by the water flow was this orange fish about 8 inches long.  Whoohoo!  I no longer needed to figure out how I was going to capture the truant fish... it had trapped itself.  I took a bucket and filled it with water, removed the skimmer and just dumped the fish into the bucket.  In a mere minute the fish was found, transferred and replaced in the Bridge Pond.

I just love it when a plan comes together... OK, so it wasn't in the plan but it could have been!

Whoohoo!!