I woke up later than I have in a very long time - possibly years. But I guess eating and going to bed so late will do that to someone.
After breakfast, Mike and I went out with Carter while Mike (guide) took Justin and Ron out. We went way up river above the rapids and started by using bottom bouncers for walleye. This was not proving very effective, so we went a little farther up river and started jigging.
In the movie The Princess Bride, Inigo remarks, "I wonder if he is using the same wind we are using?" when the Dread Pirate ship is gaining on them. I can relate to this after the morning's fishing, as the boat we were in barely caught any eating-sized fish, while the other boat limited out within a couple hours. I wonder if they were fishing in the same water we were using? This might be understandable if we were in different bays, but we were almost within casting distance the entire time.
It is also possible that some cosmic force knew that I find jigging a very unengaging method of fishing, so our boat was doomed. This may be supported by the fact that I only caught one good sized walleye, and it escaped the net. Regardless, by early afternoon, there was enough for a good shore lunch thanks to the other boat.
We headed a short distance back down river to Kendall. This has to be one of the prettier spots on the river.
Mike (guide) and Carter cleaned the mess of fish caught in the other boat and cooked up a great shore lunch which also included a can of stuffed jalapeño peppers.
After lunch we continued fishing, but switched to casting for pike. We fished a few bays through the afternoon. The fishing was good, but not great. Most of the fish caught were smaller pike, but I did manage to bring in another pretty good smallmouth.
Throughout the afternoon, the wind picked up considerably, making it easy to cast in one direction but hard to cast in the other.
As afternoon wore on, we decided to begin to head down river and try to fish at Lamprey Right Bay. But once we got there, we were not sure if anyone was hunting that stand so we ended up going back to camp.
The boat ride back to camp was absolutely brutal in the more open sections. The wind had whipped the river into a wavey, kidney-punching torture fest for myself in the front of the boat. Luckily there were only a few sections of river where it was really bad.
There was some down time in camp while the six people still hunting were out (Tyler's bear wasn't recovered). Once they were back, John (late to camp) had taken a nice sized sow. Amanda had barely grazed a bear (which oddly came back to the barrel after that) and wasn't able to get another shot. No one else had shot anything.
It was a good day. So far the fishing has been a little bit tough this year, and with a storm brewing for Thursday, the future is in doubt. I guess it always is.
I'm still hoping for one day, or even an afternoon where the pike are biting at anything that gets chucked at them?
No comments:
Post a Comment