Off My Game

After a couple of weeks of high water, Mort and I finally got out this past Friday.  We were both really looking forward to it.  Life has whipped me lately and I really needed the relief that a night on the Grand brings.  It turns out that I was more tired than I thought.  Getting the boat ready, I found myself having a hard time focusing up.  My mind was kind of numb and hazy.  With Mort's help, I fought through the fog and we eventually made it out on the water.

The first thing that I noticed was that as we were going out, several boats were coming in.  Seemed like a bad omen.  We headed up river and tried a couple of spots without much more than a few taps.  I suggested that we head back down to the shallow low water spot by the Rogue River island.  Mort picked up a redhorse just about as soon as we anchored.  That was all the action that we got for awhile and we both ended up dozing off.  This never happens.  No matter what kind of day or week I'm having, it all usually just sort of slips off of me when I get on the river.  I don't have any great explanation other than work and my young family have really taken it out of me lately.  We messed around the island for awhile longer, fishing in some picture perfect wood.  Mort picked up one more really big redhorse.  It's a good thing I had the Sucker King with me or I might not have had bait for the night.  Sounds like half a joke, but my dad really does have a nack for catching fish with a hook and crawler.  He always out fishes me when we're catching our bait.  I like to think that it's because I'm saving all of my prowess for the cats.  It might just be that he's got a better feel for it than I do.  I wonder what he'll think of the title, Sucker King.  I'm guessing it won't stick like "Mort" did.

With light starting to wane, he decided to head in so that I would have time to get my bait cut up and get myself into position.  After I dropped Mort off, I went and anchored in the mouth of the Rogue and threw out a crawler while I cut up my bait.  I didn't feel very confident that anything would grab the crawler, but I still kept a pretty close eye on the vulnerable spinning rod leaning against the back bench.  Soon after I had my cutbait bagged and the boat cleaned up, I spun in my chair towards the back of the boat just in time to see that rod take a bow towards the river.  I grabbed it and set the hook on a 6-pound channel.  It's always fun to fight them on my bass gear.

By this time it was just about dark, so I headed up to my spot below the Northland Drive bridge.  I anchored off of the second pylon from the north bank and dropped in my 3 baits.  I was still feeling whimpy, tired, and cold so I layered up like I was ice fishing in January.  It didn't take long before the rod right in front of me did a little hop.  Knowing that channels frequently hit a bait and then come back to it, I grabbed the rod and got ready.  Within a minute I got another good hit, let the rod load up, and set the hook on what must have been a really nice channel.  I kept my drag tight at first because the channels don't usually run drag on my baitcasting reels with the 80-pound PowerPro.  After this fish jerked me around the boat with some pretty amazing head shakes, I decided that I'd better give her some room to run.  After a short tussle, I finally saw a shadow of the fish.  This would be my biggest channel yet.  Of course, it turned out to be a 15-pound flathead.  I was pleasantly surprised, but not totally shocked.  They don't usually show themselves until sometime in May, but this has been a bit of a strange and warm spring.  I was having a weird night in a weird season.  Even though the water was still only 57 degrees, it made some kind of sense that I'd catch a flathead in my little Twilight Zone.

I snapped a couple of pictures and released the catfish back to the cool water.  It didn't need any reviving.  It jumped to life and shot straight back down towards the bottom just as soon as it touched the water.  After letting her go, I noticed that Dr. Flathead had cured what had been ailing me.  Suddenly, I was hot with all of those clothes on and I was Red Bull alert.  I guess it was good to see her.

The rest of the night was pretty typical.  I had a lot of hits and managed to boat 3 more channels-one dink and two that were somewhere in the ball park of the 6-pounder.  When we headed out earlier in the day, I noticed that the dock was way out of the water.  This ended up being a problem when it came time to trailer the boat.  With the trailer backed into the water far enough to sink the runners, it stuck out a good 10 feet past the dock.  With the wind and current, there was no way that I was going to get that boat on the trailer and stay dry.  Rather than stew about it, I quickly resigned myself to the fact that I'd have soggy feet for the next hour or so and waded on in.  I'll bring my rubber Burly boots next time out, but I hope the park guys get that dock down where it should be.  I sure didn't feel like myself out there the other night, but whoever that guy was, he caught some nice fish and spent some good quality time with his old man.  I hope he appreciates it.

Off To A Good Start

I’ve never been on the river this early in the year before, but we had the boat ready a couple of weekends ago and God blessed us with a 3 day stretch of warm, sunny weather this week.  Eighty degrees on April 1 is unheard of around here.  I decided to take advantage of it and see what was happening on the Grand.

I was in the boat by about 6:30 in the morning.  The river’s up a little bit, so I thought I’d start out just off of the launch and around the island where the current slows up a bit.  I figured once the sun was up, the fish might gravitate towards this shallow low current spot.  It would be a little warmer for them.  I threw out a crawler and some dip bait while I waited for daylight.  I didn’t stay in my first spot for too long because I parked in the middle of a cloud of those evil no-see-em bugs.  I tried to hang in there while they constantly bounced off of my eye balls, but I just about went mad and finally had to move.  When I reeled in to reposition the boat, I found weight on the rod with the crawler.  Most of the suckers in the Grand are redhorse or white suckers, but there’s also this disgusting, blotchy, warty, brown sucker that looks like it emerged right up out of the mud.  My first river fish of 2010 was one of those guys.  I didn’t want to touch it, so I kept it in the water and used the pliers to pull the hook out.  It gave me the heebie-jeebies, but it was a fish.  I followed it up with a few redhorse right at sun up.  If the suckers were on, the channel cats must be.  I was in for an excellent day.  After cutting the suckers into bait and putting them on ice, I headed up river to see if there were any new snags.

I didn’t find too many.  The stretch of wood that hugs the bank across from the gun club looked about the same.  Other than that, there were no good blow downs until I got up to the Elbow.  There are two really nice snags in deep water up there.   There’s also still a lot of wood scattered all up and down that cut bank, including the landmarks that I used last year to find some of my best holes.  It really made me wish that the flatties were going.

Before long, I also found myself wishing that the channels were going.  I fished dip bait, cut sucker, cut creek chub, and crawlers.  I fished deep snags, shallow snags, heads of holes, shallow flats, and current breaks.  Nothing.  Halfway through the day I got one good yank on the dip bait at the snag under the power lines, but I missed it.  A turtle immediately popped up above the dip worm, so I’m pretty sure that it was him down there.  I gave him a verbal lashing for screwing with me.

Mort called to check in on my progress from time to time and I had to keep telling him that I hadn’t found any active cats yet.  He asked me why I thought they weren’t biting.  The only thing I could land on was the water temperature.  The air might have been 80-degrees, but I was reminded that it was only April 1 every time I stuck my hand in that frigid water.  I got to wondering exactly what the water temperature was.  I remembered that Mort had bought a fisherman’s temperature sensor the year before and we had never used it.  I called him up to see if he knew where it was and hinted not so subtly that I was curious to find out what the temperature is right now.  My dad has always been the giving kind and he graciously brought it to me.  We talked for a little while at the dock and then I headed back up river to the wood across from the gun club.  I anchored next to it and threw my bait on the outer edge.  I wanted to mess with the temperature sensor, so I didn’t take the time to put fresh bait on.  I tossed out the cut chub that was on there the whole time I was talking with my dad.  It was looking pretty dry, but maybe it would re-hydrate at the bottom of the river.  I just started fidgeting with the sensor when that rod started dancing.  I set the hook and wrestled a 6-pound channel to the boat.  This fish really had some shoulders.  Great way to get my catfish season started.  I spent most of the rest of the early evening hours in this general area.  I didn’t run into any more fish, but I sure enjoyed the warm breeze and the serenity that a day on the river brings me.

With maybe a couple of hours of daylight left, I headed down to the bridge to fish off of the pylons.  I don’t love fishing around the bridge because people tend to yell at you from their cars.  I used to answer them, figuring that they wanted to know how the fishing was.  It didn’t take long to realize that they were making fun of me.  I get cursed at, called racial slurs, you name it.  Mort and I call them “the hecklers.”  I’ve learned to just wear my headphones when I’m around the bridge these days.  Whether my iPod is on or not, if someone is trying to get my attention I can just point at the headphones in my ears and shake my head.  Anyway, last night I tucked in close enough to the bridge that people couldn’t see me from up above.  I cranked the iPod just in case.  Sitting there waiting for a bite, I remembered the temperature sensor.  I tied a couple of bell sinkers to it so that it would sink.  As soon as I saw what I had done, I nicknamed this little device “Twig and Berries.”  I’ll let you figure out why.

Here’s the goofy thing about this picture.  I took about 100 shots of this thing to get just the right angle and completely forgot that I was fishing for a little while.  My headphones weren’t helping matters.  When I finally looked up, the rod on the right made a couple of hops.  I grabbed it and set the hook, but completely whiffed.  I couldn’t even feel the weight of my line and sinker.  I was totally confused.  A closer look showed me that the line was under the boat.  This sometimes happens when you come off anchor.  You end up drifting right over the top of your bait.  A look around told me that this hadn’t happened.  I reeled up and eventually realized that a fish had picked up the cut sucker and swam up river.  I got a medium sized pike to the surface just before it shook its head and dove back to the depths.  A bonus fish. I’d take it.

With only one channel in the boat after 14 hours of fishing, I had all but written them off.  I was enjoying myself anyway, so I decided to stay until after dark and fish the hole and flats down river from the bridge.  I set anchor over 10 feet of water a stone’s throw down from the bridge and dropped my baits.  With my headphones still blaring, I went to the front of the boat to dig my headlamp out of my backpack.  When I turned back towards the back of the boat, that rod on the right was bouncing like Hayden after she drinks one of those mochas from McDonald’s.  I set the hook and quickly pulled up a smaller channel.  Maybe there would be a night bite after all.  And maybe I should keep getting distracted.  It seemed to improve the fishing.

There was a night bite.  I had steady action.  I hauled in a 5-pounder and almost had a double when the second rod folded hard a couple of times as I was fighting the first fish.  I missed on the hookset.  After awhile, the bites turned into one hit wonders.  All three rods were getting tapped, but never more than one little bump at a time and nothing was grabbing on.  I finally decided to pack it in and head home for one of those short, fitful nights of sleep that always follow a night on the river.

Here’s what I learned on my first day out:  Channel cats will bite in 50-degree water, but you’ve got to work hard for them.  You absolutely can see no-see-ems.  Pike like a little cut sucker now and then.  If you fish across the river from a gun club, you can expect your serenity to be shattered by the thunderous report of a high powered rifle.  Diving into the bottom of the boat is perfectly acceptable.  Tying two sinkers to a temperature sensor looks hilarious.  That steak house on Northland Drive smells awesome after you’ve been in a boat all day.  Setting the hook with your finger resting on the braided line with a light drag can give you a pretty good cut.  If I like it, then I better put a ring on it (courtesy of one of Michelle’s workout songs sneaking onto my iPod).  Facing west all day will give you sunburn on the left side of your face while leaving the right side pasty white.  You, in fact, can write a blog entry on April 1 without making some lame April Fool's joke.  A .5 fish per hour average can still feel like a good day.  And most importantly, I realized that nothing (fishing-wise . . . settle down) can come close to my love for catfishing on the river.

Scouting Trips

With the exception of a brief interruption this past weekend, we've had the longest stretch of sunny days that I can remember in all of my 36 Marches.  Thanks to my mom offering to have Luke overnight one night last week and Hayden overnight one night this week, I found myself with a couple of nice days where I only had 2 kids to tote around.  Since I can only fit 2 in the back of my Jeep with their car seats, I jumped on these opportunities to check out the lower end of the Grand River in neighboring Ottawa County.  My first trip took me along the north bank of the river, checking out launches on the side roads off of Leonard Street.  On my second trip I checked out the south bank and got a pretty good look at a couple of my prospective bayous.

I brought Hayden and Lincoln on my first outing.  From what we can tell so far, these two are just about exactly alike.  If they weren't my kids, I'd call them spazzy.  No, you know what?  They are my kids and I can't think of a word in the English language that better describes them.  Case in point; one of their favorite things to do together is scream back and forth.  They take turns yelling in one another's faces, getting louder and louder until I'm able to loosen my clenched jaw and yell, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU TWO?!  KNOCK IT OFF!"  I'm a calm guy, but when these two are in full swing, they can really get the old man's right eye twitching.  So, with the terrible twins in the backseat and a lot of miles and time to be logged on the road, I knew that things might end up getting pretty hectic.  I promised them McDonald's after we checked out a couple of launches.  I also brought Hayden's Hannah Montana CD along to keep her entertained.

We left the driveway happily bobbing our heads to "Hoedown Throwdown," but by the time we got to "The Climb" we found ourselves stuck in a traffic jam in the middle of downtown Grand Rapids.  As I stared at the rusty bumper of the old Ford van in front of me, I got sucker punched in the back of the head.  "Gungy, Gawgy."  That's Linc-lish for "Hungry, Daddy."  Shoot!  I was in such a hurry to get going I threw the kids in the car without giving them their normal after nap snack.  I had also packed like a dad.  I chucked a couple of diapers and a box of wipes on the passenger seat.  Never gave food a passing thought.  "Hayden, try to distract Lincoln for me."  "I can't, I'm hungry too."  Oh boy.

After about 15 minutes in the parking lot on 131, we finally got rolling.  With the car  moving once again and some new scenery in front of them, the kids luckily forgot about food for the time being.  It was tough going on Leonard until we put a little space between ourselves and the city.  It eventually transformed into a winding 2 lane country road.  We could occasionally see the river down in the flooded valley to our left.  After about 25 minutes on Leonard, we found the first launch.  Deer Creek Park is just west of Lamont near Coopersville.  It's basically some green space, a parking lot, and a launch.  The whole park was under water.  We could only see the tops of the handicap parking signs.  The kids weren't even a little impressed.  Still, I had an idea of how long it would take to get there from my house and I'd now be able to find it in the dark if I decided to head out early one morning this spring.  This will be my spring channel cat spot.  Mort and I are hoping to get into some of those fish that push 20 pounds when they make their run up from Lake Michigan.

With the kids begging to go to McDonald's, I pushed west towards the bayous and let them know that it wouldn't be too much longer.  The drive to the next launch was quite a bit further than I had anticipated and I was starting to get a little tense.  Lincoln was absolutely starving and had fallen into repeatedly asking where Mommy went.  Hayden was done with Hannah Montana and fixated on getting a happy meal.  I finally found the launch that I will use to get me to Pottawattomie and Stearns bayous.  It turns out that it's very near the Nunica exit on I-96.  I'll go after pike and bass in these bayous and see if I can figure out walleye in the main river channel of this area.  The launch is upriver from the bayous which isn't ideal.  I generally like to fish upriver from where I launch in case I have problems with the motor.  If I'm upstream, I can always float back down to the launch.  Still, I'm looking forward to getting in our boat and exploring this section of the river.  I'm thinking an early April trip is in order.  Maybe I'll throw in a couple of rods, some crawlers, and a tub of dip bait.  I did finally get the kids to McDonald's and they once again returned to their happy, spunky selves.  Despite my dumb dad stuff, the trip went very well and I got one step closer to putting my spring fishing plan together.

I had a feeling that my outing with Luke and Lincoln would be relatively stress free.  I fed them before we left and I threw in water bottles and additional snacks for the road.  Luke is a big Four Seasons fan, so we traded Hayden's bubblegum pop for some oldies but goodies.  131 was cruel to us again.  Someone had dumped a load of empty plant flats in the left lane.  Even though these things are just about as thin as paper, people were almost coming to a complete stop as they weaved through them.  196 and Lake Michigan Drive were all clear.  When I got out past Grand Valley, I jogged over to a road that runs right along the river.  From east to west the name of the road changed from North Cedar Drive to Green Street to Mercury Drive.  I found a couple of nice parks with launches, but they were quite a ways up river from the bayous.  I eventually wandered over Stearns and then Pottawattomie bayous.  Looking at them on a map, I pictured them as isolated and surrounded by desolate wetlands.  Both have homes on them and are in a pretty populated area.  I won't be quite as alone as I'm used to on the river, but if the fishing is good I won't mind.  I'm curious to see what kind of boat traffic and fishing pressure this end of the river gets.

We hit a park on the way home.  It was pretty windy and cold, but the boys had fun walking a trail and then playing on the playground.  On the way home "Walk Like A Man" played.  When it was done Luke said, "Hey Dad, you need to walk like a man, okay?"  I chuckled and said I'd do what I could.  He said, "No, you really need to walk like a man."  More chuckling, "Okay, buddy."  After a little pause I said, "Hey, wait!  Why are you saying that?  You're being funny?"  He remained completely deadpan.  "No, Dad.  You walk like a girl."  Not long after, another song started and Luke joined in, "Pretty as a midsummer's morn, they called her . . . Dad!"  How did Luke get so smart and where did he get such a smart mouth?  I always thought with my general love for the outdoors and my tendency to shave maybe twice a week that I had a certain rugedness about me.  Apparently I have some work to do to toughen myself up in my boy's eyes.  He later told me that he "was just trying to be funny like you, Dad," so that made things better.  I've got to hand it to him, he kind of had me going.  I didn't know that he had the aptitude to kid like that.

Nothing is stress free when it involves a couple of preschool age kids, but my scouting trips went very well.  I have a better picture of this new section of river and I know right where to go to get on it.  Time will tell  if my efforts translate into fish.  I think they will.  I can't wait to make that first cast.