It's a reminder of how lucky I am that – on the morning of my first wedding anniversary – I paddled out into the rain in a kayak and fished for smallmouth bass.
The LT Nancy was still operating on West Coast time (sleeping), so just after dawn, I grabbed an ultralight spinning rod, shoved one of the camp's short, stubby kayaks in the water, and paddled into the teeth of a gusting wind that occasionally whipped the rain horizontally.
The weather was courtesy Hurricane Ernesto, who frankly could have found a better time to pummel the East Coast. The Southeast wind made fishing from the tiny kayak an exercise in cast, paddle, retrieve, paddle, retrieve paddle, cast, paddle...
During a brief lull in the wind and rain. To the left is a sunken rock wall...Fishing's fishing...I can't say with certainty where fly fishing becomes futile, but I correctly guessed that fishing 10'-20' deep in rain and wind – from a kayak that scooted across the water with every gust – was probably past that point.
Still, fishing a gitzit (a small, squid-like plastic bait) on an ultralight spinning rod is a hell of a lot of fun, and in between gusts, I caught two 10" smallmouth and lost a bigger fish when he spit the gitzit at the kayak (note to self; fumble for the camera
before the fish gets to the boat...).
After two hours of fighting the wind and rain, I was drawn ashore by the scent of blueberry/banana pancakes frying in the kitchen. Later, the wind calmed briefly, then switched direction and is now blowing up whitecaps from the northwest, battering the boats that headed uplake before the wind shifted.
TomorrowOf course, the primary benefit of being at the start of a long fishing trip is that time is one your side; you can wait on the next day's weather before deciding what's next, and it's possible that more rainy weather will put me on the river, throwing a streamer at the few landlocked Atlantic Salmon still rumored to be there.
Tonight, Nancy and I are cooking maple-and-walnut-crusted pork tenderloin for our anniversary. Lucky food. Lucky guy... See you at the dinner table, Tom Chandler
p.s. - I'm experiencing lots of problems with the reliability (and slug-like speed) of the dial-up connection (been trying to get this post up for over a day). Hopefully better for tomorrow's post as I've got some cool stuff coming...
Maine, Grand Lake Stream, smallmouth, kayak