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The annual solo overnighter


Al Agnew

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Longtime members of this message board might remember I go on a solo 2-3 day float about this time of year every year, to a stream that will remain unnamed.  This year I had time blocked out for the next three weeks, and just planned to watch the weather forecasts for a three day period with as little chance as possible of thunderstorms, because I hate being in a tent by myself when a storm hits.  Sure enough, the last three days looked perfect, so Wednesday morning found me making the drive to my creek.

This time I wanted the entire three days, and decided to put in a few miles upstream from my usual spot, even though I knew that there would be less water up there.  My shuttle guy even tried to talk me out of it, saying there wouldn't be enough water.  It had been many years since I'd been on that upper end, the absolute upper limit of possibly floatable water.  But I remembered it as being only slightly smaller than my usual put-in, so I was willing to chance it.

The first riffle told the tale.  I made it down it, dodging rocks in just a few inches of water, both banks close enough to touch with the paddle, but I knew there would be wider riffles I'd have to walk.  Now...how would the fishing be?  

I quickly found out that the fishing would be excellent.  Nothing big, but plenty of 8-12 inchers, and the occasional 14-15 incher.  This upper end gets fished even less than the rest of the float, and the fish were willing.  No paint or aluminum on the rocks...it had probably been a month or more since anybody had tried floating it.  There were a couple places where one could drive a 4WD vehicle to the creek, and there were some signs of people around them, but I saw nobody, even when I came to my usual put-in spot, often a popular swimming hole, in late afternoon.  And I'd forgotten how beautiful that upper end could be, with picturesque bluffs and big, clean gravel bars, many of them more rock than gravel in this headwaters section.  The water was almost as clear as air, the bottom clearly visible even in the frequent deep pools.  The habitat was spectacularly good, with rock everywhere and pool after pool 5-10 feet deep.  I saw a few bigger smallmouth, though none that I thought were over 18 inches, and caught one 17 incher and a couple 16s.  During the morning, a buzzbait seemed to be working best, but by afternoon, with the sun high and bright in a cloudless sky, the fishing slowed.

When I came to my usual put-in, I had to start making a choice about how much longer I'd fish before setting up camp.  Either quit fairly early in the evening and camp a mile or two below, or keep fishing til nearly dark, to get past the next possible spot where I might run into people, before camping for the night.  I decided to let the fish tell me what to do...if the fishing picked up, I'd fish until late.

The fishing picked up.  Walk the dog topwaters began to work, and the fish got bigger.  I caught several 15-16 inchers, and then one that I couldn't quite stretch to 18 inches, but it was close.  So I kept fishing.  I passed the access with maybe 45 minutes left until dark, passed up several gravel bars that weren't high enough, level enough, or fine enough gravel, and finally stopped on a barely adequate bar about the time I began to need a flashlight to see.  I'd set the goal of catching 100 bass that day, but didn't quite reach it, finishing at 95.

Luckily, my tent is easy to set up, and as usual, I didn't need to cook anything; I bring only cold food on these late summer trips.  The stars were fully showing as I ate by the light of my flashlight, and I spent another half hour just staring up at the stars and listening to the night sounds.  My hearing isn't what it used to be, and I miss hearing some of the insect noise, but the katydids were chorusing loudly.  Then I turned in, digging out my phone and reading a Kindle book I had downloaded, while the phone charged from a portable charger.  Finally my eyelids drooped and I drifted off to sleep.

To awaken to something messing around with my cooler just outside the tent.  I grabbed the flashlight, but by the time I flicked it on the critter had disappeared.  I turned it off, and five minutes later it was back.  Again I failed to catch it in the light, but this time I'd heard the little chittering sound it made, and I suspected I knew what it had been.  More on that later.

I awoke in gray dawn, mist thick over the river, dew dripping off my tent's rain fly.  I thought about sleeping a little longer, but the creek was calling.  I hastily broke camp, just throwing the wet tent in the canoe, and started downstream.  The fish were active on topwaters, and I was catching some nice ones.  The buzzbait, unlike yesterday, wasn't producing, so I settled on one of my new favorite commercially available walk the dog lures, the Sixth Sense Dogma.  Unfortunately, as I'd find out, I only had one of them.

I soon came to a guy sleeping on a cot on a gravel bar, the only person I'd see until I reached the take-out.  He had a kayak pulled up on the bar, and a camp set up, but back in the trees I could see his vehicle, so I suppose he'd driven to that point.  Just downstream, within sight of his camp, a mother otter and three half-grown young ones were cavorting in the shallows along a gravel bar.  A great blue heron was watching them from a safe distance.  And swimming across the river just below was a big cottonmouth.  Wildlife galore.  Then, a half mile downstream, was ANOTHER otter family.  And this time, as they watched me, I heard them making that same chittering sound.  I KNEW that sound around my tent the night before was an otter.

The fishing slowed in mid-morning, so I stopped to spread the tent out on a gravel bar and dry it out, while eating a late breakfast.  I roamed the big gravel bar, noting the laid-over, nearly uprooted trees along it.  This year's big flood had really scoured the creek channel and ripped out a lot of trees.  I even saw several spots where there had been landslides.  But this upper section is still excellent habitat, and most of the banks had survived more or less intact.  That would not be the case as I floated farther downstream.

In early afternoon, the fishing picked up again.  I caught another one just under 18 inches, and then a gorgeous 19 incher.  But then my frustration began, and it began when I hooked a very big fish on a long cast down a fast run.  I don't know how big it was exactly, because it hit in fairly fast water and I didn't get a good look at it on the strike, but I thought I saw a very long, bronze side as it turned.  Then it drove for a downed tree.  I had to stop it, so I clamped down on the spool of my casting reel.  The fish was just too strong.  SNAP.

My only Sixth Sense Dogma.  Funny how you catch some fish on a lure, gain so much confidence in it that when you lose it, you just don't think anything else will work as well.  But in this case, there was a big reason for it.  You see, the Dogma has three very sharp trebles.  I'd been having trouble with missing strikes on my usual two hook WTD lures until I put it on, but it was deadly on hooking the bigger fish.  I had no other three hook lures that I had confidence in.  I tried the one other three hooker I had, but just didn't like the way it looked in the water...and wasn't catching fish on it anyway.  So I defaulted to a Sammy 100, which is about the closest I had to the Dogma.

As the afternoon waned, the Sammy began to interest big fish...but I simply couldn't hook them, or keep them hooked.  In the last two hours of the day, I had at least a half dozen smallmouth that I was sure were over 18 inches hit the lure, a couple of them multiple times, and came up empty every time.  I checked the hooks.  They seemed sharp.  I kept catching smaller fish.  But why couldn't I hook those big ones?  The last two hit in fast water just above the spot I'd planned to camp, and I almost kept fishing, since it was still about an hour until dark.  But I was frustrated, and hungry, and tired...and this is one of my absolute favorite river campsites, so I stopped beneath the huge, looming bluff with the setting sun making the rock glow, and set up camp on the high gravel bar with fine, smooth gravel.

A whippoorwill was my only nighttime visitor this night, and it didn't call long before moving on.  A screech owl called, and was answered by two barred owls.  I read more of my book before sleep.

Another misty dawn, more dew on the tent.  A new day...surely I'd have better luck with big fish.  Like the day before, I broke camp quickly and started fishing.  But the fishing was slow.  The Sammy wasn't producing anything.  Other WTD lures did no better.  So I gave the buzzbait another try, and it was the ticket.  Fish after fish for a short while, and many of them in the 15 inch class, with a few 16s and a 17 thrown in.  And then I hooked a really big one, and yesterday's frustration returned when it took me into heavy current.  SNAP!  The line had broken up into my rod, apparently a weak point.

After that, the fishing slowed, but I did get a few more strikes from probably big fish, but my replacement buzzbait wasn't hooking them, either.  The habitat had always gotten marginal on this last stretch, but the flood had really wrecked it.  One run in particular, a place where I'd caught several big fish in past trips, and had seen one of the biggest smallmouth ever blow up and miss my topwater a couple years ago.  It had been smooth, moving water of medium depth along a steep alluvial bank covered in smallish trees, with a bluff set back from the bank about 20 feet.  I hardly recognized it.  The flood had basically removed that entire alluvial bank, except for isolated clumps of trees and mud, and now the river flowed up against the bluff.  It actually looked to be better habitat than before, with big rocks that had been buried now exposed, but it was laced with downed trees in the water, nearly impossible to fish.  I was at the end of it, and hardly paying attention as I made one more cast into marginal water above the riffle with the Sammy...and as I reeled the lure in after twitching it half-heartedly a few times, the water exploded...and I missed another very big fish.

I caught a fish here and there in marginal habitat, nothing in the deep pools, a few in fast water at the the heads of pools.  It seemed like the more mediocre the water looked the better the chance was that I'd catch fish.  So when I came to a nice little log at the head of a short, shallow pool, it had "everything" I was looking for on this day.  Sure enough...it was where I broke off that buzzbait on the big one.  

I kept fishing because there was water to fish, but I was tired, and the fishing slowed to almost non-existent in the last mile.  So after being very, very careful with all those fish I'd caught on all those multiple treble hook lures, I finally made a mistake.  Trying to make a very long cast, I wound up and came forward with all my might, but the lure somehow hit the end of my paddle sticking up behind me, glanced off, and into the back of my right arm.  Freak accident.  I've had to get hooks out of myself twice on this annual trip, but this time I knew it was going to be difficult to impossible.  I could, mainly by feel, get my side cutter pliers back there and clip the split ring holding the hook to the lure, but getting the string trick to work was going to be impossible.  So I paddled the last quarter mile with the hook stuck in my arm, loaded up, and headed home, where Mary helped me pop it out, the first time she'd ever had to use the string trick.  She's a former nurse, but it made her rather queasy...but it worked, as usual.  A strange end to a sometimes frustrating but ultimately wonderful as usual annual solo adventure! 

Final totals:  95 fish the first day, 97 the second, 40 the third.  That first day, probably 75% of them were under 12 inches, but the other two days I'd say 40-50% were 12 or better.  Nearly all came on either the various walk the dog topwaters I used, or buzzbaits, though I went through one stretch of an hour or so when a Superfluke was magic on 12-14 inchers.  Eight otters seen and at least one heard that I didn't see.  Four eagles.  A whole bunch of herons and vultures.  Five deer, including a fawn that I paddled up to within 20 feet before it totally freaked out, running frantically up to mother on the other end of the gravel bar and hiding beneath her belly even though it didn't quite fit there anymore.  One other person encountered.  One mediocre campsite, one spectacular one.  Well over 30 miles paddled with no mishaps paddling, one hook in the arm.  Two very raw thumbs, and a big blister on the side of my left middle finger where the callous from the trigger of the rod handle had softened from my time in Montana...I had to scrounge a rotten t-shirt hanging on a limb, cut a strip from it, and wrap around the finger to be able to keep fishing without hurting every cast, and especially every time I set the hooks.  One good book finished while lying in the tent.  Yep...successful trip!

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Excellent report! 

Al, I finally switched to bigger diameter line several years ago. 

"Honor is a man's gift to himself" Rob Roy McGregor

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23 minutes ago, Hog Wally said:

Someday I'm gonna fish from dawn to dusk.  It's been too long for me   You are living the dream Al Agnew 

I think you both are living the dream! The rest of us can just sit behind the keyboard.

"Honor is a man's gift to himself" Rob Roy McGregor

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