August 27 Fishing Report

[Mark]

Delvis and myself made a one day trip on Saturday. We made the usual Turner Mill to Whitten trip in my trusty canoe with 2.5 HP motor. Beautiful day with lots of people on the river. We got an early start for us at 9am. The river appeared to be about normal flow and clear. We had early luck around Stinking Pond area. In my opinion, the gravel bar at Stinking Pond is one of the best camping places on the river. There is shade most of the day, plenty of wading water upstream and downstream, a great swimming hole to cool off, a beautiful bluff across the river where we always see an eagle or two, and most of the river traffic has past Stinking Pond by early afternoon. We spent most of the morning working the first half mile downstream from Turner Mill. We could have easily limited out by noon, but started the day releasing the smaller ones that we lip hooked. You know us bait chuckers, we do occasionally gut hook some fish, and we do keep the ones that look like they wouldn't survive.

We took our time early in the day to let the canoers get ahead of us. We work the first two bends in the river a good hour each, catching several fish at each turn. Fisherman's Hook had a crowd of jet boats. Guess they were keeping entertained watching canoers not familiar with the river getting dumped in the hook and guessing by the amount of debris near the Hook and just downstream, I will ascertain that they had plenty of guests who were glad the jet boats were near to help track down supplies after the canoeists overturned.

Overall, there sure seems to be alot more trash in the river than I have seen before. Goodness gracious, we have such a wonderful, beautiful, natural resource with the Eleven Point River. There are fewer and fewer place you can go with the freedom to camp where you choose, not whole lot of regulations or restrictions, get the feeling of actually being in the wilderness away from civilization, and people can't make the effort to pick up their own trash.

Just above Horseshoe Bend, we came across 3 Federal Officers stuck in a shoal with motor problems. Seems they sucked up a little too much gravel. I think they were pretty embarrassed as we heard them trying to get it running for the next hour or so. They would get it running, head downstream for a short distance, and then we would hear it sputtering again. They didn't check us or anyone else we saw as they went by, and we figured they just had enough of the engine problems and headed back to their trucks. With the holiday weekend coming up, I would expect that law enforcement will be out on the river full force this weekend. No problem if you're obeying the law!!!

We spent the rest of the day cheery picking our favorite spots. We figured we each easily caught 15-20 fish a piece, although some of the better spots that usually produce didn't fare as well as we expected the further downstream we got. We hypothesized that the nearer we got to Whitten, the more river traffic we encountered and probably had the fish pretty spooked by the end of the day.

All in all, a great trip for late August. Keep your tip up!!!

Mark

[rgriff49]

Mark,

Sounds like a good trip - thanks for posting. I agree that the gravel straight across from the Stinking Pond bluff is hard to beat for a campsite.

Ryan

[snap]

..OK..I'll nibble!!! glad to see you had a good trip, and that you got on the river earlier than usual. Also, I might add that I always catch a lot of fish with delvis too. Might be something to that , heh???

[Mark]

Yes, snagging is a very effective method.

[snap]

...snagging , therefore means, "covering lots of river area in short periods of time"..yes...very effective!!!

[Mark]

...snagging , therefore means, "covering lots of river area in short periods of time"..yes...very effective!!!

Absolutely - maybe MDC should make nets legal also, it would be very effective also!!

[Mark]

Then there is also dynamite!