Wearing my winter fishing gear has severely limited my storage options. In the warmer months all I do is stuff some paraphernalia in my cargo shorts and I am good to go. Now with the water hovering around shock and the morning air holds a steady chill, I had to figure out some way to store my crap. I had been stuffing all my accouterments into a belly pouch on my jacket. No rhyme or reason, just a haphazard pile of junk in a pouch.
I could never find the stuff I was looking for, and it kind of took some of the fun out of changing lures or bait. I hung up the fly rod for the time being and am focusing on slinging hard baits at the Ladyfish. Some people call 'em garbage fish, I call 'em easy. I found two areas of merging current that are thick with Lady's. When I say thick, I mean every cast lands a fish. Pulling in 100's of fish is tiring and not having your shit together makes for some pretty frustrating moments.
Over the holiday, I ran into a school of Lady's and Trout that was of biblical proportions. I had a hunch about a boat lane that was recently dredged. I knew the area had just been dug and I heard the lane was about 11 feet deep. So I decided to walk the lane markers, and toss towards the far side and slowly reel either up or down the channel, not directly across it at a 90 degree angle.
Low and behold I was rewarded with a 27" Bull Trout on the first cast. Now this is where things got a lil weird. The lane and its depth housed both species, but at different depths within the column. I wasn't expecting there to be that many fish, in such a small area, all feeding and milling about, not bothering each other. I would catch a glimpse every once in a while of a monster, but I never caught anything over 30". I'm not even really sure what some of the shadows were? At best I would think some of them were the Bull Red's that have been reported.
I caught my first fish at 7 a.m. just after low-tide. High tide wasn't til 1:30, so I had 4 hours of wadeable water. I got lucky as well with the boats, they didn't kick up any wakes over 6 inches. I think the shock of some idiot standing out that far slowed them down? I met one guy, (we'll call him Dave) he was a friendly guy for 8 a.m.
He cut his engine 100 yards up-stream from me and floated toward me yelling out how was the fishing, what was biting, and did I mind if he drown some bait? I told him to drift in down stream of me and anchor off by my feet. I knew he was gonna be a good guy when he cracked a beer and offered me one before he was within 50 feet of me. This was a first. He drifted next to me, passed me a beer and the bow-anchor-line and he set the stern anchor. He was stationary and casting before I got my shit together and figured out I had made a new friend.
I put my rod on his bow and opened my can of MGD. We introduced ourselves and had a quick laugh about the anchor and my foot. It was nice to have something to stand on, the mud was sucking me down, and you don't lose a boot in the mud when your wearing waders. I showed him what the fish were hitting, and what I thought was going on with the water column along with my idea of no 90 degree angle, and we were off.
After Dave caught his first 50 fish, he stopped and sat on the cooler. He asked me," where my fishing vest was?" I told him I didn't have one that wasn't for fly fishing. He asked me if I had ever heard of Fishing packs before? "Yep, heard of em, do not want to pay $100 bucks for something that holds bait." That was when he did the damnedest thing. He took his, emptied it, said I deserved it for letting him tie up on my honey-hole, and gave it to me.
Of course I bickered about taking it, but his reason on why I needed to take it was pretty similar to mine. He told me to take it because I could have been a dick and not let him tie up. I could have been rude, or crass, or purposely tried to keep him from enjoying drowning some bait. He told me it was nice to see some idiot this far off shore, that wanted to share his secret spot; that and "I looked like an idiot digging through my kangaroo pouch looking for shit." I agreed with that last part completely and threw the neck strap over my head and accepted the gift.
He pulled anchor and drifted the channel out catching big fish and whooping the whole way out of the small bay. Dave hung out for maybe an hour-and-a-half, from 7:30-10? But the whole experience was pretty sublime. The randomness of the events, that far removed from "land", and coming home back to shore with a gift? It's funny, even when I try to get away, try to put normalcy behind me and wander around areas that I really have no business. I still am able to find, or somehow have decency find me. I'm humbled by Dave and his easy nature, the pack he gave me will remind me of that every time I rig it. Thank you Dave.
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