Paddling the River

Knock another item from my bucket list, I finally was able to fish and kayak the Mississippi river.  This is something that my son and I have talked about for a couple of years, even going so far as looking for fishing kayaks on Craigslist.  This whole adventure has intrigued me for awhile and quite honestly, I am not sure why.  When my son and I visited the Sportsmen Show a few years ago, we chatted with a company who was giving away a fishing kayak and who also offered rentals for daily fishing trips.  We spent quite a bit of time at their booth and came away excited to experience a trip like this.

Move forward a couple of years and a chance visit to Groupon and before you know it, I had a coupon for a 6 hour trip from the very company we talked to, Clearwater Outfitting, www.cwoutfitting.com, located in Clearwater, Minnesota.  It was going to be a bit of a drive for us to get to the store, but we found out that it was well worth it.

We checked the weather prior to leaving and it looked like we had selected a fairly decent day.  A bit of a breeze but no rain so off we went.  It was a little over an hour drive to the store and as we pulled in, both my son and I were more than ready to ditch the car and spend a day on the river.  Now we are not big river people in fact neither of us had spent much time fishing or even floating or boating on the river.  My wife was a bit hesitant on us going from a safety point of view.  Our summer and especially the month of August has been quite wet with most areas receiving 5+ inches of rain for the month.  Since we didn’t know anything about the river, she was concerned that the flow would be fast and the depth would be deeper than normal.  We did come to find out that this was far from reality.

Once we arrived, we checked in and needed to go through a safety briefing, which turned out to be a video on what not to do when out on the river.  There was another couple in our safety briefing who were heading the opposite way of us but were also going to be spending the day on the river.  After the video, we were fitted for life jackets and then given a briefing on fishing the river and where the fish had been biting.  Another perk, which we didn’t realize how great this was going to be, was that lunch was included, and what a lunch it was.  More on that in a bit.  We signed out the equipment and down to the river we went.  By the way, the people working in the shop were fantastic.  Very friendly and you could tell they were very passionate about paddling and were intent on ensuring we had the best experience possible.

As we stood by the shore, the person helping us gave us some final pointers and off we went.  Initially, due to some bridge construction, we needed to go upstream and towards the middle of the river so that we could get around the construction obstacles in the water.  Not sure if it was the combination of going upstream, the wind blowing and me not really feeling comfortable on the river, but the first few minutes of the experience were a bit shaky to say the least.  My son and I maneuvered our way around the construction stuff and settled in on the side of the shore where the wind was minimal.

Once we moved into the shore area, we began tossing our lines in hopes of landing our first smallmouth bass.  The individual who was helping us did warn us that the bottom was fairly rocky and that if we happened to get our lures stuck, that to release the lure, we would just need to go upstream a bit and then tug it free.  I moved a bit ahead of my son and saw him head towards shore.  I waited for him as I wasn’t sure if he had landed a fish or what the deal was.  Much to my chagrin, he actually had hooked a tree limb so once he was free from that we moved downstream little by little.

Now since we were new to this whole river paddling thing, one item we needed to figure out was the timing.  We had a map of the river, but what we didn’t have was a good idea on how long it would take us to paddle and fish.  We did know that a lot of smallmouth had been caught near the end of our trek so we knew we wanted to save some good time for that.

About 30 minutes into our trip, my line went tight and both my son and I were waiting to see our first smallmouth.  I pulled in the fish and we were soon treated to our first Mississippi river northern pike, a very disappointing fish, fun to catch but disappointing from a species point of view.  We continued paddling and looking at the map.  We knew the area we wanted to have lunch so once we saw the spot, we focused on getting there as our stomachs were grumbling a bit.

What we didn’t realize about the spot we picked, was that the river and wind were going to be a bit of a challenge.  We paddled and worked our way to the sand bar and once we had beached our kayaks, we were more than ready to dive into lunch.  We ripped open the bags and to our amazement, the sandwiches packed for us looked amazing and tasted even better.  We both inhaled them, the chips and the cookie and then my son commented, “that was the best sandwich I have ever had”.  Not sure if it was because we were hungry or what, but I totally agreed with him.

We climbed back in the kayaks and continued our journey down the river.  A bit while later, my line went tight again and this time I was able to pull in the first smallmouth of the trip.  A lot of fun catching it and once it was in the boat, both my son and I hoped that it was a sign of things to come.  As we paddled down the river, both of us were enjoying the scenery around us.  The landscape around was very wooded and sparsely populate or at least that is how it looked.  Another item to note, most of the river in this stretch is very shallow.  In many areas, we could have gotten out and walked in the water, not at all what we had expected.

As we approached our landing spot and the spot which we had been told many smallmouth had been caught we both agreed we would take our turn through this area.  The current had picked up in this area so that presented a bit of a challenge for us, OK me more than my son.  You see, I actually got myself hung up on a rock and without my son’s help I may have ended up tipping the kayak, and yes I had this very vision in my head.

We cleared the faster flows and settled into a spot that was calm and was calling out to us that this was a hotbed for fish.  My son’s line went tight and I paddled back upstream to see what he had caught.  He landed his first and only smallmouth and used his GoPro to record the event.  A lot of fun to see him catch something and to be so happy to finally land a fish.

This was the last fish we caught for the day as we climbed out at our landing spot and waited for our ride.  Both of us had thoroughly enjoyed the day, I mean how could you had not.  We helped the load the kayaks on to the trailer and on our way back, our driver told us about a fishing contest they were hosting in October.  I had a couple of thoughts float through my head and could almost read my son’s mind.  We came to our senses and decided we were going to have to wait for another year for that.

On the ride home, we both talked about what a fantastic day it was.  No, we didn’t catch a stringer full of fish, but sometimes that isn’t what fishing is about.  Sometimes just spending time with your son in the outdoors weighs more than any fish you can land.  I highly recommend you give kayak fishing a try, I know my son and I are in discussions to experience this again.

End of a Season

Now that the summer months have passed us, it is time to reflect on the fishing season.  I will have have say that in my eyes, this past summer of fishing was extremely successful and probably one of the best I have ever had.  Both my dad and I caught fish consistently, we caught bigger fish, and with what happened on Labor Day weekend, I caught the biggest bass of my life, what a way to cement the best summer of fishing I have ever had.

Labor Day weekend is always kind of depressing as it signals the end of those summer weekends and the most dreadful thing of all, the start of school.  The other item about Labor Day weekend is the weather, it is pretty much hit or miss.  The summer ending weekend for 2016 was pretty windy and actually kind of cool.  What that meant for fishing is that it was going to be limited as we were not even able to get the boat off of the lift.  Now normally my parents are a bit cautious with the whole taking the boat off of the list when it is windy, but I knew they weren’t being cautious this time as our neighbors who are on the water no matter what, didn’t even touch their boat.  Guess my weekend of fishing was going to have to be performed from the dock.

With the winds howling, the weekend was pretty dismal for fishing. The 20 mph winds were making casting a bit difficult and you had to throw a lure with some decent weight in order to get any distance on it.  Most of Saturday was spent landing a couple of small bass and northern pike by my grandpa and dad. Even though I wasn’t catching much I still kept fishing.

At sunset, dismal turned to fortune.  I launched my worm towards the neighbor’s dock and it seemed my lure had caught a wall of weeds.  My rod went down and at first I thought I had caught either the bottom or a pretty big stick.  Once my line started moving around I knew that was wrong but my immediate thought was that it was a big northern.  I started to fight it and after fighting the fish for a few seconds it jumped and revealed itself to be a monster bass. We didn’t have a net so my dad took off to grab one but I knew I couldn’t wait.  The bass took the lure under the dock and with my heart beating faster than it had in quite awhile, I was able to coax it out from under the dock and somehow I managed to throw it up onto the shore.  I hurried over to the shoreline and discovered that the fish was barely hooked and it probably should’ve fallen off.

My dad came back down with a net and his eyes about popped out of his head when he saw me holding a bass that weighed in at over 5 pounds.  I brought it up to show my mom and neighbors and their first comment was that I should have it mounted.  I thought it would be better if I set it free for someone else to land and experience the fun that I had just experienced.

What a way to end the season.  All in all, a great year for fishing with a ton of bass caught and me being crowned the fishing champion of the family.

My Tournament Story

As you may have read a few weeks ago, my dad and I recently signed up to do a fishing tournament on our home water in Southern Minnesota. Since this was our first tournament we didn’t have high expectations for the day and we just hoped to catch one or two fish.

We arrived at our cabin around 4:30 on a Friday night to prepare our boat and to get all of our stuff ready. Also, we had to go to a meeting for lake selection and for a couple of other rules. We got the lake we wanted and also got a pretty early starting spot at 8th.

The next morning we woke up around 6:00 am in preparation for the tournament. Our breakfast consisted of some bagels with peanut butter on them. We loaded up the boat and shoved off to head to the boat launch. We arrived at the boat launch and went through the necessary check in procedures. We were told that the weather report looked perfect for the day. We sat in the launching area waiting for the seven boats in front of us to launch so we could hit our spot and start fishing. The spot we had chosen was the same area we had been fishing all year which consisted of a marina and heavy cover. One of the boats that launched before us was able to reach our spot first so we started a little further down the lake. At right about 7:30, we had a fish on and landed a small 12.5 inch keeper. Small, but it was just big enough to keep. By the time we reached our spot the other boat had left so we were able to fish it. Before I knew it the line was whipping out of my rod. I thought I had a monster bass, but by the time I got it on the boat we figured out it was a big northern, not the target species but at 26 inches it was still a good fish. Just a little later we had a “double header” which meant that my dad and I both had fish on at the same time. We landed them and they turned out to be a 3 pounder and a 2.5 pounder. After catching a bunch of small 10 inch bass we decided to move to a new spot. At this new spot we caught a few more small keepers. At about noon we turned around and headed back to our starting spot. We pulled in a few nice fish and culled out some of the smaller ones.

For the rest of the afternoon we didn’t have any more bites so we headed back to the weigh in site to make all of our fish stayed alive. The tournament we were in had a “small fish award” which gave $200 to the boat with the smallest fish. A few boats had weighed in before us so we had an idea of the competition. Our small fish was weighed first, it weighed 1.1 pounds, but we were edged out of the prize by .01 pounds, a real disappointment. We finished the weigh in with a 10.91 pound bag which finished us in the top 20 out of forty boats. We didn’t win but we felt it was a good showing for our first tournament.

We finished the day with a steak and shrimp dinner banquet at the local VFW. It was overall a fun experience and one I would recommend to any fisherman.

Feeling like a Professional (Part 2)

To continue on from last week’s post, I wanted to write about the remainder of our first bass fishing tournament.  As I left off last week, we had a full livewell of bass and were on our way to the weigh-in with a bit of hope that we might be able to squeeze in for a monetary prize.

As we pulled into the shore, my son guided the boat to a spot that would allow us to pull up on shore and then get our fish to the weigh-in as quickly as possible.  Now this part of the adventure, we hadn’t really planned for, but thought hey how hard can it be to put 5 bass into a bag.  Well it wasn’t as easy as we had envisioned.

To get the bass from your livewell to the weigh-in spot, you use what amounts to a large zip lock bag.  Now our bag had never been used and honestly had come with the boat.  Since our boat is older, think bags have come quite a ways since ours was put into the boat so we may have looked a bit like amateurs but that was ok.  We filled the bag with water and my son began the process of transferring fish.  Trying to get them out of a livewell and into the bag without dropping any of them proved to be quite the task.  I was laughing in the background as he finally grabbed the net and trapped them into the net so we could get them to the bag.  Somehow the boat next to us wasn’t having any issues.  Guess we have some work to do on this part of the process.

We finally loaded the fish into the bag and began the sprint to the weigh-in tank.  Did I forget to mention that our bag may have had a hole?  Good thing for my son’s long strides.  We got them to the tank and crossed our fingers that none of them would be belly up.  It made us feel good that as we were standing in line we heard a few comments regarding how nice our fish looked.  All both of us could think was, we had a chance.  Finally it was our turn.  We handed the judge our small fish participant and as the tail crossed the 12 inch line, I thought we had it in the bag.  The scale read 1.10 pounds and all I could think of was YES!!!!!  We had to have won that one.  He turned around and said too bad, you are now in second place as smallest fish is sitting at 1.09 pounds.  Wow, I could have probably squeezed .01 pounds of water off of him.  Oh well now on to the big fish.

He grabbed our lunker and registered it at 3+ pounds.  I glanced at the leader board and saw that it wasn’t going to win but it was a solid showing.  Our overall bag weighed in at 10.91 pounds and at the time we were in 4^th place.  Now mind you there were many boats yet to weigh in, but at least we weren’t showing the big goose egg.  They put our fish back into the bag and we hauled them back to the lake.  In they went and I am proud to say, no floaters so a successful day for us.

We went back to the weigh-in area to see how things were progressing and we slowly watched us slide down the chart as more boats weighed in.  Once we slid out of the money, we headed back to the boat and to the cabin to get some food, drink and to clean up as our day wasn’t over yet.  One of the highlights of the whole tournament was still approaching, the awards banquet!!

Included in our entry fee was a dinner and awards at the local American Legion.  I probably hadn’t mentioned this yet, but should as this tournament was a fund raiser for American Legion Post 108 in Le Center, MN, (American Legion Post 108).  The money raised from the tournament goes towards teach area children about US Patriotic Symbols, supporting local veterans, the American Legion Post itself, and other organizations such as DARE and the local food shelf.  For both my son and I, this was a great cause and a great reason for us to enter this contest.

We headed off to the legion for dinner and upon arriving were greeted by just the whole small town flavor to events.  A lot of laughing, camaraderie and just people getting out to visit with other people.  I got the sense we were the only ones not from the local area, but honestly that didn’t bother us.  We pulled up to a table and before you know it we were engaged in some great conversation regarding fishing and also hunting.

We were treated to a dinner of steak and shrimp, salad, bread sticks and of course dessert.  A cash bar was also available, along with a silent auction, raffle prizes and door prizes, (which we didn’t figure out we needed to register for).  The whole prize awarding process did get kind of long, but the folks in the room didn’t seem to mind.  There was a ton of hooting and hollering along with laughing and just some good old fashioned conversation.  My son and I were entertained by the folks at the table and when one of their tickets was announced as the winner of the shotgun, the table exploded with yelling, (some of it not totally age appropriate), and laughing.

The evening concluded with a huge thanks to everyone and the announcement that the winner of the tournament landed 24 pounds of fish and also won the biggest fish with a 6 pound trophy.  My son and I both agreed that we weren’t sure our livewell could have held something that big.

As we headed off towards home, we both reflected on how much fun we had and what could have been and things we need to adjust/change for next year.  It was a great time and we learned lots which somewhere in our goals for the day, we seemed to miss.  Our goals for next year will definitely be different and somehow within all of those goals we need to keep a couple of things in perspective.  First off, we need to have fun, can’t get totally caught up in the competition side of things.  And secondly and probably most importantly, the event is for a great cause and just us participating we are helping the cause and supporting the veterans who have served their country so we can live as we do today.

 

Feeling like a Professional (Part 1)

Nothing like a vague title to suck you into reading a blog post…..  This post is about our fishing tournament, a very good time had by all.  My son and I finally stopped talking and signed up for a bass tournament on our chain of lakes.  We kept saying our expectations were to not just get shut out, but in all actuality, I think both of us kind of hoped that we would fish well enough to at least get our money back.

For folks who watch bass tournaments on TV, most of us realize that these guys just don’t pull up to a lake, drop the boat in and start catching fish.  There is the travel from lake to lake, hours of pre-fishing and then fishing for a few day, spending time with sponsors and lastly marketing yourself so that you can earn a few dollars to support your family.  My son and I didn’t have to do all of these things, but we did get to experience a few of them.

The night before our tournament we headed off to the pre-tournament meeting.  This meeting was to ensure our registration paperwork was in order, select the lake we were going to fish and get our start order to leaving the dock area.  After checking in, we stood around and sized up some of the competition.  I think it is safe to say that we were surprised at the crowd around us, but at the same time intrigued by our fellow fisherman and how they would stack up against our skills.  The coordinator of the event went over the rules and then it was time for the main event, selecting the lake and getting your start order.

Now for this tournament, you had the choice of selecting two lakes to start from.  We weren’t sure how this was going to work, but were crossing our fingers that we would get the chance to fish out home lakes.  The process began and we soon learned that we would be able to fish the water we wanted, however so were about 30 other boats.  The coordinator of the event began calling out numbers and when our number was called at the 8^th spot, my son and I both breathed a sigh of relief.  We figured by being the 8^th boat out of the launch area, we would be able to get to one of the spots we had targeted.

After the meeting, we headed back to the cabin, for the final preparation of rods, the trolling motor, life jackets, tackle boxes and oh yea a couple of game so euchre.  We headed off to bed knowing that tomorrow we were getting up early and potentially, just potentially we had the chance to win some money.

The alarm went off at 5:50am and we both popped up, (OK, maybe I am exaggerating a bit here), anticipation of some big fish driving us to get moving as quick as possible.  We were both pretty happy that we had prepped our stuff the night before as the clock moved rather quickly and before we knew it we were heading over to the launch area.  We pulled into the area and began the wait, along with the 30 other boats.  As the clock approached 7, all of a sudden the boats began to explode out of the launch area.  My son and I counted them and when #7 took off we knew the time had come.  As the flag waved for us to take off, my son gunned the boat and……we were off.  Whew, one of my biggest fears was that my motor would fail us and we would have to sit there putzing along with our trolling motor.

We flew across the lake and saw that one of the boats had taken the spot we had hoped to fish first.  We made a quick adjustment and moved up the shore a ways and before you knew it we were into a groove of casting and trolling.  Another boat cut in front of us but they were fishing deeper than us so we continued along the same line hoping that we would be able to at least put a fish or two in the boat.

About 45 minutes into the tournament, my son said fish on both of us held our breath as we guided the fish to the boat.  We put it in the net and both of us knew that our fish was not going to win us any big fish awards but it did put us in line for the smallest fish.  My son cranked up the livewell and in it went.  So far the morning was going well, the motor’s were working well and we were not going to get shut out.  Now the same couldn’t be said for another boat that we glided past.  Their trolling motor had crapped out on them and were hoping we had some duct tape along to that they could McGyver it back together.  No such luck for them and so they continued to struggle with their motor.

An hour or so later, we came upon the area we had wanted to start with, but knew it had been fished by a couple of boats already, so we weren’t expecting anything out of this hole.  There was also another distraction on the dock, a guy training his dog.  We continued to pitch and reel in hopes that the guy would leave with his dog and low and behold, away they walked.  My son tossed his worm near the dock and down went his pole.  Unfortunately for us, the species he pulled out of the lake was not one we were looking for on this Saturday morning.  My son scored a very nice 25 inch northern pike but for what we were looking for, this fish was worthless.

We continued down to the shoreline and decided the spot that we would turn around at and also have something to eat.  One thing that you seem to forget to do when fishing is to eat and drink plenty of fluids.  We floated past our ending spot and out came the bagels and peanut butter.  We discussed our next options and decided to float back through the area we had just fished just in the hopes that we had missed something.  As we began our final jaunt through the area, my son’s line tightened and our hearts started beating a bit faster.  After a bit of a struggle he landed the fish and we now had two in the boat.  Something else happened as my son was reeling in, my pole bent down and again we had that hope that we finally had landed something decent.

As my fish got closer to the boat, I knew it was bigger than what we had previously caught.  As my son extended the net, I saw that it was good size and well both of us were hoping that this was the fish to change our luck.  The fish weighed in at a big over 3 pounds, which for us was a nice fish.  Now the odd thing about a tournament is that you really don’t know how the other boats are doing so it is important to remain focused on what you are doing and not worry about them.

So with 3 fish in the boat, we decided to head off to our next destination.  We began to fish the area and cross behind another boat who was fishing the area.  As soon as we had passed them, I landed another fish and in the well it went, 4 in the boat.  We had already exceeded our expectations and had met our goal for the day of not getting shut out.  Now our minds began to wander to start thinking about actually placing.  My son’s mind was calculating weight and was thinking out loud that we had a legitimate chance of placing.  That is a funny thing when you are spending that many hours on the water, your mind had time to think and play through various scenarios.  All of a sudden we went from a goal of not getting shut out to thinking about bringing home some serious cash.

Over the next couple of hours, we did land more fish, however all of them were similar in size.  In fact, my son landed a ton of fish, the problem is that all of them were in the 10 inch range which were not legal fish.  There was one major decision we had to make, do we sacrifice weight and take a run at smallest fish.  We had one in the livewell that was just a tad over 12 inches.  In my eyes, we didn’t have enough weight to win, but this fish might be a nice $200 that would help us break even for the day.

As the end of the day drew near, both of us agreed, we would keep the little fella and take a stab at smallest fish as long as we didn’t land a lunker that would we both felt would move us up the chart.

At about 1:40pm, we decided, 6.5 hours was enough and we headed back to weigh in our bag.  What happens next, will have to be continued in next week’s posting…….