Overcoming High Water Conditions

I've been looking forward to June since the end of the ice fishing season, but so far it isn't really living up to my expectations.  The story for this spring has been big rains and high water.  The river has been swelled for weeks.  One positive outcome of this frustrating situation is that it has pushed me further up river to seek out spots that will produce when the river is up.  I've found that the first mile beyond my normal stretch holds far more snags, bends, holes, and small islands.  I have been able to pick out some spots that produce even when the river is up.  An outing that I took earlier this week will serve as a good example of what I have found up there.

Hearing that we had yet more rain coming this week, I made a call to Michelle as I was heading home from work on Monday to offer to watch the kids for a few hours in turn for being able to head to the river by 7:30 or so.  She took me up on it, so with kids in tow after dinner, I went to the creek and stocked up on some creek chubs and even one small gill.  I should add that my stock of chubs is getting thin in the creek behind my house.  I thought that they would naturally replenish, but apparently I'm taking them out more quickly than new ones are showing up.  I'm going to have to leave them alone for awhile and get my bait from the local park where I previously caught them.  I ended up with close to a dozen chubs, including some that I had kept in a bucket after my last trip.  More would have been better, but this was enough to get me on the water.

At around 8:00 I dropped the boat into the river on this small little launch that doesn't have a dock.  I'm not loving this part of my new fishing situation.  The launch by my parents' house is beautiful and has a nice dock.  Launching and trailering the boat is dry, quick, and easy.  This one is muddy and shallow, and I have to wade in to get the boat on and off of the trailer.  Anyway, I headed up river under gun metal skies and in a mist of rain.  The first spot that I tried was the down river end of the second island up.  I got bumped a few times, but as I was waiting I saw a nice snag that seemed more inviting.  I set up on this snag and missed a few solid hits before landing an eater sized channel.  I don't normally keep them, but I decided before this trip that I was going to keep some eaters and have them for dinner the next night.  I got bumped a few more times on that snag, but I couldn't hook up.  I was getting frustrated, but threw in one more time.  I finally sunk the hook into my tormentor and was surprised when it leaped right out of the water.  It turned out to be my first gar pike.  It jumped a few more times, including when it was up next to the boat.  I grabbed my pliers to release it without bringing it into the boat, but one more jump and it released itself.

I dropped down to another small snag just as the sun was setting.  I've never seen the mosquitos as bad as they are this year.  Even with bug spray on, they swarmed me, looking for any opening that I would give them.  Latex gloves come in handy in this situation.  They allow you to protect your hands without having to put dope on them and risk contaminating your bait.  The wind suddenly came up and began blowing at what must have been at least 15-20 mph.  This cleared the skeeters and gave me some much needed relief.  The sudden wind made me wonder if a thunderstorm was coming in, but one never materialized.  Back to the fishing.  I picked up another channel and had a few more swings and misses.  With just enough light to see, I then slipped down to the sizable snag that is stacked against the top of a small island.  I've fished this before and have mentioned it in at least one previous entry.  I threw in cut chub on two lines and the gill on the third rod.  It didn't take long before I got a good hit and set the hook on something heavy.  I knew quickly that I was dragging in a turtle.  As I hauled in this angry snapper, the rod with the gill sprung to life.  With the turtle on the rod in my left hand, I grabbed the bouncing rod in my right and set the hook on nothing.  That old snapper had cost me a flattie.  I cursed the bad timing.

With this spot producing nothing more, I slid down to a snag along the edge of the island.  It gave me one more eater channel.  Running out of bait and time, I nosed up to the bottom of the island.  This is a nice current break and I noticed that it drops off into a deep hole.  A live chub picked up a small flattie in no time, but then things slowed right down.  I sat for quite awhile with only a few bumps.  At a little after midnight I decided to stack the last few chunks of cutbait on my hook and give it one last toss.  I finally got a nice steady pull that kept the rod loaded.  I grabbed it and set the hook on another smallish flattie.

I kept the fish on an aerator in the livewell overnight and cleaned them after work yesterday afternoon.  I soaked the fillets in milk, dipped them in egg, and then coated them with Drakes Batter Mix.  After baking the fish for awhile, I noticed that the Drakes coating looked somewhat dry and I didn't think it would bake to the golden brown that is promised on the box.  I melted some margarine and basted the fish nuggets.  I got a very good response from my family.  Michelle seemed reluctant to try it, but by the end reported that she thought that she might even like it better than chicken.  For her, it's important that she doesn't see any of the preparation process.  All she wants to see is the golden brown, fully cooked nuggets.  It was good that I was able to do all of that while she was gone at the dentist.  Luke also gave me a positive response and even came back for more.  I'm still a catch and release guy, but I might keep a few eaters from time to time to keep the family fat and happy.

We had huge rain again last night and so our county and those around us are under flood warnings.  I was wanting to bring Mort out tomorrow to show him this stretch.  I'm not sure if it's worth the effort, but I'm sure I'll still go.  The only way to learn how to catch fish in all of these tough situations is to get out there, find spots that produce under these conditions, and figure out how to fish them.  Getting bait will be a problem for the next couple of days as the creeks are all swelled.  I will probably have to get some gills and maybe resort to dip bait for the channels.  The fishing has been good enough to keep me busy, but I'm still waiting for stable water so the big flatties will start biting consistently.  Still a lot of great fishing ahead. 

Week of Freedom

Having 3 small children, I just can't leave whenever I want to spend some time on the river.  Most of my trips are the result of some planning and more than a little bargaining with the wife.  It's only fair.  I know that being at home with all 3 kids is quite a bit of work.  If I'm going to leave Michelle with this responsibility, it's only fair that I offer to reciprocate at some time in the near future.  The thing is, my whole being is screaming to fish much of the time, so all of my planning and focus is on fishing trips.  It gets old.  The wife wonders when I'm going to actually plan a little family vacation, a day for the two of us to get away, a date, anything.  I don't have a good answer for this.  There are plenty of good intentions, but admittedly not much follow up as of yet.  On my end, I do spend almost all of my time either at work or with my family.  I consider myself an active and involved dad.  Is it too much to ask to spend one or two nights a week fishing, especially when most of my time away is after bedtime? 

You're probably getting the idea that this can get pretty complicated in our home.  That is why I couldn't believe my ears a few years ago when Michelle was talking to her sister, Heather, in Boston and it sounded like they were planning for Michelle and Hayden to go out there for a week.  I was pretty sure that the grandmas would be willing to watch Luke for me (We didn't have Lincoln yet).  A full week of nothing but fishing hadn't even been close to my radar before this.  As it began to sink in that this was, in fact,  going to happen, I calmly walked into the bedroom away from the family and threw down the best white boy dance I could muster.  Until then I hadn't dared to dream of a full week of freedom, of 168 straight hours in which I could fish whenever I wanted.  Now, it was coming and it was all that I could think about.

It was 4 or 5 months between that phone call and the actual trip, but it eventually rolled around.  Luke was already up at Grandma's and I dropped Michelle and Hayden off on a beautiful Sunday morning.  As luck would have it, Michelle knew someone who worked at the airport and he was able to get me into the terminal to wait until it was time for them to board the plane.  Oh, good!  Thanks, guy!  My drop and run turned into an hour-and-a-half in a crowded airport terminal.  I was thrilled.  I was just starting to twitch when their flight was called and I was finally sprung to the river.

Murphy showed up a few days before Freedom Week and dropped several inches of rain on West Michigan.  I knew the river was high, but I had no idea what I was in for.  I pulled into the parking lot and found the launch and most of the dock under water.  The river was swelled far beyond its banks.  The current was pushing by at an extremely high rate and it was full of everything from small branches to huge uprooted trees.  I've got a stubborn side, so instead of heading to a local lake, I backed the trailor into the dirty foam that was swirling in the submerged gravel drive above the launch and got ready to head up river.

The bridge generally sits several feet above the water surface, but with the river in the state that it was I could practically touch its girded underbelly as I past by.  There was so much junk floating in the current that I couldn't go at much more than idle speed for fear that I'd run up on a bobbing tree trunk.  For months I dreamed of 18 hour days on the river filled with big green flatties and an assortment of other gamefish.  Those dreams were quickly being replaced by a sickness in the pit of my stomach.  I knew that the fish were just down there holding onto something.  They wouldn't think about eating for well over a week.  Still, I found a big snag outside of the main river channel and anchored.  I figured that maybe something was sitting down there trying to stay out of the current.  If I was lucky, it would hit a big piece of cut bait.  I sat at my first spot for close to 2 hours.  I quickly developed the frequent habit of looking over my shoulder to make sure that I didn't get run over by an errant  tree.  Three times I had to pick up anchor and move out of the way while the waterlogged remains of an oak or maple with branches still full of bright green leaves pushed through my spot.  I found too that it was useless to try to keep my lines in the water, as there was just as much stuff bouncing along the riverbed as there was on the surface.  I stayed until dark, and then went home fishless and defeated.

I kept a close eye on the water level that week and tried it a few more times as the river dropped a couple of feet per day.  Eventually, the posts of the dock were most of the way out of the water.  I used it once, but discovered that hundreds of spiders were taking refuge on those posts.  I still get a shiver thinking about  laying my hand on the post nearest to shore and having the surface go fluid as a layer of big, white spiders either moved to get out from under my hand or climbed aboard in hopes that my arm was the way to solid ground.  I sputtered unintelligible curse words and shook my hand with an adrenaline charged violence.  I could feel them crawling inside of my clothes for the rest of the night.

Eventually the river shrank back down to something close to normal.  The first fish I caught that week was a sucker.  This is probably the happiest I've ever been to see one of these dumb looking fish.  I picked up a few channel cats, but things just never got right until a week or so after the family returned.  My dad talked me into hitting a local lake during one of the evenings, but we happened to hit it on tournament night.  We stopped fishing to watch 25 boats race to their spots, and then decided to head in early as there wasn't much shoreline left to fish.

I've had a few more Freedom Weeks with the family in Boston since then.  I look forward to them with intense anticipation each time they are made available.  I probably shouldn't admit this, but by the time the ends of those weeks roll around, I'm ready to get off of the river and spend some time with the family.  I think that I'm in the best situation that I can be in.  I fish just enough to keep the hunger.  Having all of the responsibility that I do and having to work for my outings makes them all the more enjoyable.  If I could go all the time, I think that my outings would actually lose a little of their luster.  I wouldn't mind testing that hypothesis.  I don't think Michelle would go for it.

Speaking of Michelle, this Sunday is Valentine's Day.  To demonstrate some growth, I've devised a plan and I'm actually going to follow through with it.  She's been extremely busy and stressed with a new teaching position this year.  The spa is her ultimate relief.  I've saved a little money and I'm planning on taking Monday off to be with the kids while I send her to the spa.  There's hope for me yet.