A Freaky Day On The River

[Mark]

On my previous post about my summer on the Eleven Point, I forgot to mention the day on the river that my friend Del and I will never forget. It was around June 15 when we put in at Whitten in my trusty new Old Towne canoe with a 2.5 Mercury motor. It was around 1pm with overcast skies and a forecast for spotty showers throughout the day. A light rain began no sooner than we took off. We stopped at the first gravel bar above White's Creek to fish that hole. Immediately the rain picked up, so we pulled out the lawn chairs to sit under the trees until the rain slowed down. As luck would have it, we ended up getting a pretty good 1/2 hour shower. As the rain brought a drop in temperature, a light fog began to settle over the river. It was quite eerie how fast the fog developed as the rain began to turn to sprinkle. The river looked just like you would expect it to look at 5 o'clock in the morning.

As the rain lightened, we continued our trip down the river at a leisurely pace, stopping at every hole to get out and fish from the bank. The conditions were perfect for fishing, as we began to catch some decent trout to put on the stringer. The rain had completely stopped and the sun actually tried peeking out a time or two burning off the light fog that had developed.

Now my buddy Del is known as a bit of a procrastinator and I found myself reminding Del several times that we needed to make some time if we wanted to get to Riverton by dark, even mentioning that the rain could pick up again and I didn't want to be on the river late in the evening if the fog moved in again. Del would continue to reply, "Let's just fish this hole a little longer" as I patiently waited for him to get ready to move on.

It was probably around 6 pm when I had my limit on the stringer with all in the 15-16" range as I continued to drop hints to Del that we needed to be moving on. His reply was always, "Just a couple more casts". Sure enough, shortly after 6pm, it clouded up again, the temperature dropped and the fog began rolling in. We were easliy 3-4 miles from Riverton. Within minutes, the fog became quite heavy and visibility was no more than 40-50 feet. Our motor was virtually useless and we didn't dare proceed faster than a snail's pace. Del had 3 on the stringer and wasn't about to give it up until he had his limit too. No way was he going to call it a day without his equal share.

I began getting quite nervous. I have been on that stretch of the river countless times, yet as visibility dropped, suddenly I wasn't sure what might lie ahead at any moment. I knew we were approaching Halls Bay Chutes, which I normally avoid by walking the canoe around the side chute just so I don't lose any gear. But with visibility now barely 20-25 feet in front of the canoe, the river looked totally foreign to me and I had no idea what was ahead at any given moment. Interestingly, we began seeing more fish swim by than I had ever seen. I believe that the fog was making it difficult for the fish to see us coming too, and we were on them before they could get spooked. We saw several fish bigger than anything I have ever caught swim right by the canoe in 18" of water.

The spring at Boze Mill dropped the temperature more and the fog increased even more. We made it through the side chute at Halls Bay and continued on at our snails pace, cracking jokes nervously, knowing that at any time we could be in danger of getting in trouble and dumping. We easily spent the last 2-3 hours inching our way along, not knowing what lie ahead. We managed to make it to Riverton by 9:30 pm. Although we had let several fish go throughout the day as we caught fish all day long, Del ended the day without ever getting that 4th fish on the stringer. It was an experience I will never forget and don't want to repeat any time soon. The Eleven Point can be a scary place when you can't see where your going.