It was a good end to the summer for my brother and I Monday evening on pool 3. We were in what has apparently become or signature craft- the 17 foot alumacraft canoe when we decided to risk it all by sticking our nose out into the main channel about 7 PM. Much to our surprise, there wasn’t a cabin cruiser nor a stitch of wind nor much of a hint of current anywhere to be seen. We had a great float for the next two hours. Other than bouncing over only a couple of wide spread cruiser wakes and having a fellow IDA’er cruise by slowly with a friendly greeting, we had the river to ourselves. The channel cats definitely had the feed bag on. Nothing over about 4 pounds, but the action was constant. Production slowed a little when in tossing the one and only pair of pliers up to the front of the canoe, I overshot the mark a little in the dusk and they ended up in the river. From then on it wasn’t uncommon to have 2 cats in the boat at once impatiently croaking as we did our best to wrestle out the hooks. We had only 1 possible flathead encounter when the rod with the half-pound chunk of sucker bent over and although I was able to get him hooked up, we were not anchored, so whatever it was had no problem dragging us over to a shoreline brush pile as if we had a 3 horse going on the back. It didn’t take him long to hang up tight. We should have had a plan for that! Fishing from a canoe certainly has it’s limitations, but on Monday night, it was pure fun.
September 6, 2006 at 4:03 am
#1219992
