A great weekend

I am a lucky man. I had a three day weekend, so I spent Saturday floating one of my absolute favorites. On Sunday I spent the day with friends from the SEMO smallmouth alliance for the Castor river stream team cleanup. Monday was a 10 mile float on a great little river.

I needed a big boat for trash hauling for the stream team cleanup so I strapped a solo seat into my 17 foot tandem. It's old, being made in 1983 but I don't think it has been paddled more than 5 times in it's life. It paddled great, although it was a little tricky to paddle the first shut-ins with such a long boat.


One of my absolute favorite floats.








































The stream team cleanup is something that I get a lot of enjoyment out of. The first year that we did the event, we picked up 1700 lbs of trash. The access points were dumping grounds and there was so much trash in the rivers that we completely filled our boats in the first couple of miles. It has gotten progressively better every year. This year we only picked up about 500 lbs of trash. At times, I would walk around a gravel bar and have trouble even finding trash. It is a good feeling to see change happening.

My boat filled with trash.

I think this boat might be a little to big for the creek






The next day I floated with a good friend. The fish were slamming my homemade lures, so I was a very happy man. No monsters, but plenty of 16 inch fish to keep me happy.










I will never get tired of floating these amazing places.

In like a lamb

I haven't gotten to fish much this past month or so. Water temps are nearly 60 degrees and the fish are moving. I have had good days and bad days, and it is surprising that I had much more success in water colder than 45 degrees than I have had at 52-58. I missed about a 10 day window due to work obligations; and average water temperatures increased from 43 to 55 on my favorite lake. Fish have actually started to move to spawning locations and the adjacent deep water after heavy fishing pressure or fronts.

I caught this largemouth shortly before a two and half hour drive to the airport. I then had to endure 6 days in vegas for a conference. That is a LONG time to be in Las Vegas.




I did my first smallmouth fishing trip of the year, which typically have been very productive for me. I try to time my trip to collide with water temperatures rising from the upper 40's into the low to mid 50's. Fishing was slow this trip. Water temps were higher than normal for this time of year and the fish weren't in places where I would have typically had success. Oh well, you win some-you lose some. I did get to fish and hike one of my favorite places on earth.


















I hadn't caught a smallmouth since December 22nd until I lipped this fatty. This spot is normally loaded with them, but it only produced one fish this trip.