We launched Saturday afternoon. The weather was overcast and misty, perfect for river kayakfishing. Finally the water got back to that greenish color we expect to see this time of year.
Right off the bat Dan hit a good 3#'er in our an area that is money on slash baits, spinners, and spooks. It's a 3' column of moderately swift moving water, with bowling ball sized boulders strewn across the bottom.
Right after that image was taken I positioned up to hit some break water behind some almost exposing boulders. I just bought a new plug called a swimmin' image in a sexy shad-ish color scheme. Got it out, got tight careful to keep the line out of the water, and started a slower steady retrieve. Three cranks in it walloped...
This fish pulled the bogs to a little better than 4.5#. She swam off strong.
As we proceeded to camp the bite stayed on strong. The fish Dan is holding is an easy 3#'er, and we hit a few more like that and a whole bunch between 12"-14" that we consider our norm.
The weather previous to our trip was somewhat rainy and therefore all the good fire wood was pretty well saturated. I carry a ziplock of lint harvested from the clothes dryer to serve as tinder. We hunted down enough kindling to get a good base fire going and found one or two pieces of wood that would dry quickly and start burning.
Around 10:30pm we had eaten and Dan was about ready to crash but figured we should do one more wood run. So off we went into the edge of the island. We walked about 20 solid yards in from the river edge to find all this interwoven wood that was crammed in there from high water. It's almost scary to see how high that water gets, and what it does.
This is Dan working a lodged tree out of the growth. It was all pretty dry and an awesome wood store for our runs into November, water level appropriate.
After harvesting our night's store of wood Dan tended to getting it heated up and fully consumed...
and I went back to fishing. I hooked a small channel cat on a berkely power worm in black with one brass rattle inserted in it. Then I switched over to a mid-running rapala crank and hit this baby walleye. It was a nice supprise, and this is the third trip in a row where walleye turned up for us. We expect that fishery to improve as we move through to the end of the season.
After releasing the lil' walleye I threw a few more casts and crashed.
The next morning was perfect. This is one of our favorite camp sites...
The last highlight of the trip was shortly after that image was taken. Dan had the coffe perking and was cooking up the pancakes. I was close to the tent and went back after my pet eddy water at this site. First cast with the spook. Got it out a little past the pocket into the current. Employed the most choppy walk-the-dog technique I could across the current, and let the spook stop on the edge of the pocket. No longer had it stopped than this 4#'er rolled on it.
She went back from whence she came no worse for the wear and I housed breakfast, like that smallie on the spook.
The rest of the day was alot of our average sized 12"-14" smallies, and we pulled a little earlier than normal, but we got our catching in.
The river is finally where it should be after the over abundance of water we got through the summer.
Tightlines and Safe Paddling!!!