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.