When Fishing a Creek,
Don’t Step on a Goose Nest

On the second creek I decided to fish this day, I stayed in the water while fishing rather than walking up on shore. A flood a few years ago channeled the creek to at least six feet deep out in the middle. The shore had been sheared off and varied from three to five feet high. If I stayed within two feet of the sheared off shore, I could walk along at creek level in water about a foot deep.

This was going pretty well. Then a goose appeared out of nowhere and while honking and beating it’s wings, landed on the water within casting distance from me. It continued to beat it’s wings, stirring up the water. I knew it had just killed any smallie bite from this stretch of the creek. I think the comment I made out loud to the goose was “you son of a bitch.”

I continued to cast in the hope a stray fish may still be around and I figured the casting would scare the goose away. The fish were gone, but the goose wouldn’t leave. It stayed on the other side of the creek about 30 or so feet away, honking at me now and then.

Since the goose wouldn’t leave, I gave up. I figured the bite was dead, may as well climb up on shore and hope the fishing would pick up further down. As I stood up on shore, now about 3 feet above the water, the goose headed toward me honking up a storm. It was soon directly under me, looking up and honking like crazy. I turned to head down a narrow animal path that follows the creek. Another honk came from directly in front of me.

A goose jumped up off a nest and spun around to face me, honking and hissing up a storm.

No big deal, I’ll just scoot right past her and be gone. I couldn’t go too far to my left because the brush was so dense. Getting back in the water was out of the question. Since I had to stay tucked in tight to shore, this would have put me right at eye level with the goose on the nest. Didn’t care to know how that would turn out. The goose out on the water was now near the other goose and they were both honking and hissing at me.

The dense brush forced me to get closer to the nested goose than I wanted to be. I assumed she would jump in the water till I got out of the way, but all she kept doing was put her head down and hiss at me.

As I got past, I thought I was free and clear. Then the goose in the water flew up on to shore to get between me and the nesting goose. The honking and hissing was intense and it would spread and flap it’s wings at me. I missed getting a picture of that the first time, so, like an idiot, I stood there trying to get him to do it again. He obliged.

I barely had the camera away from my face when it leapt into the air and started to fly at me feet first, honking and hissing and beating it’s wings. I know that the wingspan on a goose can be impressive, it can be anywhere between four to six feet wide. This is really impressive when these wings are connected to a pissed off, honking and hissing goose three feet from your face. I was so impressed that I said out loud the only words I could think of at the time, “holy shit!”

The only thing that kept me from getting smashed in the face by this goose was the stray, six foot tall weed stubble left over from last year. The goose’s wings hit the stubble and forced it to swing off and crash back into the creek.

With the intimidating goose out of the way, I figured I may as well get another photo of the goose with the eggs.

I was going to get even closer, but the honking and hissing and beating of wings was getting closer to me on my left. The other goose was making a headlong dash to get between me and the nesting goose.

I decided that I didn’t care to find out what it feels like to get hit in the face by a goose weighing 12 pounds or more. I gave them their little section of the creek.

I moved a bit down stream, but I never did catch another fish. All the while the goose on the water kept circling and honking, making sure I was keeping my distance.

In order to write this up, I had to look up some goose facts. I didn’t know that in the wild, geese can live up to 24 years. I did know they mate for life. They average 4 goslings per brood, but this nest had 5 eggs. Eggs hatch in 28 days.

Considering the amount of raccoon tracks in the area, I have a feeling these eggs won’t last very long. Either way, I’m not going to wait 28 days for the eggs to hatch before fishing here again.

Looks like I’ll be doing this again next week.

Should be interesting.