Wednesday night Fishing Club: pretty much since spring my Bro's Whahoo, Fred aka "creek warrior" and I have been meeting every wednesday evening on a piece of local trout water to enjoy the fishing, a couple beers and get out of the house on a consistent night. It's been good for me as it's kept me in touch with what's happening on the river over the course of the entire summer. The fishing has remained quite good, we've been surprised by the life on the river during the warmer parts of the normal midsummer fishing lull. Most importantly to me, I think the guy's would agree, is the time shared with good friends doing what we love to do on a regular basis. For me, fishing and being on the water is my spiritual endeavor, it's where I find the time to process the greater decisions of life, fine tune my connection with nature and balance out all of the flotsam and jetsam that flows at us from all directions down the river of life... sounds cheesy perhaps, but only to those who don't take the time to slow down a little and feel the flow of the water.
I've been back to Lake Michigan since my last post. The fishing overall was kinda lousy, by our standards anyway. We struggled to find fish in the usual depths and situations and had to completely retool our delivery after the first evening out. The deal was this, consistent east winds had been blowing in the warm water from the Michigan side, therefore forcing us to fish depths we were not quite prepared for at this time of the year. Ideally we'd have been fishing 50 to 100 FOW, but conditions forced us out to 150 to 175 and our rigging was just not suited to working this strata. That said, we still found fish and as it seemed, did as good or better than any of the charters running 15 lines. Weird thing was, no 3 year old fish. they were either 18 lbs or 8...one coho as well which is a rarity for us in T'rivers. We decided that next year we'll do an extended late june trip of 4-5 days to take advantage of the strong mid depth King bite as well as the plentiful Steelhead which always help out in filling the bag limit.
Muskies are still on a tear in the River. I get almost daily reports from the river rats on big fish and lots and lots of quality 40 to 48" fish. As for myself, the boat has been spending alot of time in the garage and in fact I noticed and had to fix a flat on the trailer this fine morning... All that changes tomorrow as I'll be heading out for the morning, all this muskie talk has me feeling a bit out of the loop and I need to be the one making the calls of good luck as opposed to always getting them.
Yesterday we had an epic float down the upper Apple. Brad came down with the drift boat and he, Whahoo and I floated about 15 miles above Star Prairie Wi. Rivers like the apple are the epitome of under fished and overlooked for freshwater angling, and it shows in the care given to the river, lack of access and overall availability of opportunity...Rest assured it's there, all a fella needs to do is get out with the proper craft and gear and explore. We've been talking about doing this section for some time and now we have. All in all it was a wonderful float but the amount of fishing water was limited overall. Smallies were plentiful as were the pike in areas with wood and depth, but the endless sand flats made the good habitat hard to find. In that stretch we found 2 good areas, separated by about 6 miles. Brad did most of the oar work, supplemented with ample amounts of the Dr's Cherry Schnapps. We did contact a few muskies, got maybe a dozen smallies, or should I say Whahoo did as i could not buy a fish to save my life. There's enough there to get me back in the fall, roll through with the Kayak and wade fish the good water.
There's much more to report and I'll do so tomorrow or saturday, getting the computer back and I've got gobs of great images to add as well....
get the hell out there and fish!
