......and had no idea what he was getting himself into!
So Rainman picks up a load of fish for me down in Arkansas and gets delayed a few hours down at a fish farm (very normal, fish farms typically are not know for efficiency) As he enters illinois he is greeted by a nice steady downpour and about 50 degrees air temps. We meet at our first stop about 2 hours east of Peoria at about 8:30 pm and load up Justin with some nice feed trained bass, fatheads, and shiners and Justin takes off headed towards a one acre pond near chicago. (this is just a side note, but I love stocking feed trained bass for many reasons!) Anyhow I jump into rainmans truck get a phone call from TJ who wants to talk about our ice fishing trip to Devils Lake this winter, but couldnt chat, we had work to do! so we head to a nice fishing club a few miles away and unload 2000 CC in the freezing rain into 5 different lakes. My rain gear was definitely not waterproof, and Rainman (what a horrible name) was soaked as well.
So we get done unloading the catfish at about 11:30 pm and head for my place. We are soaking wet and fairly cold and have a 2.5 hour ride in front of us. Arbys roast beef and a few candy bars help us get to our destination. About 2 am and we check on the fish and a tank of trout is not doing so hot. so we decide to stock em into my portable trout fishing pond that I use for trade shows to salvage em, but it had already rained 3 inches at my place, so the closest we could get with his 24,000 lb truck was 200 yards away. We bucket the fish over to the trout pond in the mud and rain and are completely soaked all the way to the bone! So then its about 3 am and we believe it or not, actually arent sleepy and both knew it would be awhile before we would be able to fall asleep so we decided to go unload a few hundred pounds of feed trained bass and some large hybrid bluegills at a clients lake about 15 miles away. (that guy just got named the new CEO of caterpillar) so we get to property and I realize I left my keys in my truck we couldnt get in the gate.
This time it was about a 400 yard trip to unload the fish from the road, so rainman persuaded me to just head back and get the keys which we did. So flash forward another hour and we finally are to the lake's edge ready to unload some more fish. Its still raining and we needed to get the 3 tanks of fish acclimated to the frigid lake water. about 25 buckets of water per tank and we are ready to stock some fish! These are some real nice fish BTW! WOW was I ever impressed with the quality. So we get them all situated into their new home and we head back to my place. We pull in about 5:30 am, Rainman gets all cleaned up, but I just dry off and am sleeping before I hit the pillow. 7:30 am rolls around and I have to head into town for a funeral.
I get back to the lake at about 1 pm and Rainman is just getting out of bed in time to watch our osprey swoop down and grab his breakfast- golden trout. (i stocked a few hundred golden trout and the osprey has been eating one every day for the last month) anyhow when Rainman wakes up, it naturally starts raining again and we load up the truck and head out to deliver the rest of our fish. At our last stop we unload the feed trained largemouth, load up a few hundred catfish into my truck and send Rainman (and the Rain) back to St. Louis while I went to a few more ponds to drop off the rest of the fish. Lets just say that Rainman went above and beyond! And I would like to just say THANKS!!!!
So at about 4:30 pm I am about 5 miles from my last stop and I RUN OUT OF GAS! My client gladly drives over and fills up a few gallons and in return I gladly give him a few extra catfish and a half dozen 1.5 lb feed trained bass I had left over. So I get to my parent house about 6 pm, eat some pizza and fall asleep on the coach. I wake up at my house about 7 am this morning???????????
Last edited by n8ly; 10/24/09 09:51 AM.
