I can tell you that something strange is going on in the murky waters of Jones Lake State Park. There is no Loch Ness Monster, and there are no adult fish. If there were, I would have caught at least one of them by now.

The only ways that those hungry little fish could have gotten there Aare these: the state just stocked the lake, or careless birds caught those minnows somewhere else and dropped them in on the way to their hatchlings.

I saw more snakes and floating hats Sunday afternoon than I did fish, and believe you me I looked. And fished. All day.

This time, though, I reverted to a Brim Buster, casting those confounded rod and reels away, and using good ole worms and a straw hat. No, I didn’t use a straw hat to fish with, but I sure did wear one to beat the heat.

Maybe I should have used it to try to scoop up some of those minnows that kept eating my worms. For there not to be any adult fish in that lake, the small fry sure are smart! They know exactly how to nibble a well placed worm right off the hook.

But I did catch two of the little devils, or maybe one twice. When they are that small, they all tend to look alike, and I didn’t bring my magnifying glass, although I did have my binoculars to spy and see if any adult fish broke water. They didn’t, probably because they weren’t out there.

Now one of my most redeeming qualities, maybe my only redeeming quality, is that I never, ever give up.

So you can certainly believe that I will be back at Jones Lake State Park next weekend to see if there really are any adult fish out there.

And I will, like I was this past weekend, be the only fisherman out there because all the locals have long learned that there are more fish in Shine Jackson’s Fish Market than there ever was at Jones Lake!