Rolling Down the River

Officer Friendly and I took a day trip down a local river on Monday. This trip has become an annual event sometime around the Fourth of July. In the morning, we shuttled Officer's car to the takeout point and then put the canoe in upstream. We floated down the river, casting a tiny torpedo and jigs as went. Officer caught several smallmouth bass on the surface bait. We anchored in a few deeper holes, catching several more bass. We ran a few small rapids and and pushed through some shallow riffles. We stopped for lunch at the pool beneath the biggest rapids. The best fishing was there-we caught bass as soon as we could get our line back in the water. The average size is small, but there were some decent ones mixed in. I did some experimenting with Gulp! Alive leeches versus real leeches. The Gulp! Alive did just as well as the real thing, even when just hanging below a bobber. This is the first time it has really worked well. The big issue is that it doesn't stay on the hook any better than real leeches, and the Gulp! Alive leeches are much more expensive. After eating sandwiches from Northern Waters Smokehaus, the world's greatest eatery (www.nwsmokehaus.com) we continued on our way, taking in a beautiful sunny day as we went. We caught many more bass, ran a few more rapids, and enjoyed the day. On the final hole before the takeout, I finally caught something other than a bass-a walleye and a channel catfish. Both fish came on Gulp! twister tails. On the final stretch of river it clouded over and began to rain. We re-shuttled the cars, loaded up the gear and headed home just before dusk. We covered just under six miles of river. Another very good trip.

Nature Moment: A mama merganser and her brood of ten ducklings met up with us on the first section of the river we paddled and basically followed us downriver for most of the trip. They would pass us when anchored to fish, and we would pass them when we shooting rapids or paddling through shallow sections. They kept going downstream when we reached the takeout. We also saw eagles and a hawk that had caught some type of rodent.