Early-Morning Fishing

It's one of my two sleep-in days, and I choose to spend it getting up before the sun and going fishing. Today I opted to take a canoe out instead of my usual bulky rowboat. The rowboat is nice, but it's, well, a boat. The canoe is much more manouverable and easier to propel, but there's also a higher chance of swamping and 1) getting soaked, and 2) loosing your gear. Hence, I equipped my backpack with styrofoam blocks in the main compartment to ensure flotation and put my tackle into semi-watertight plastic containers. Thankfully I didn't need to confirm the effectiveness of these precautionary measures. I didn't quite emerge from the lake dry, persay, but I didn't swamp, which was the intent of the statement. You see, I used a kayak paddle since I was going solo, and those paddles have an inherent tendency to retain water on the paddle blade until raised in the air, wherewith the water is released upon the unsuspecting paddle-holder.

By the time I reached the dam, my pants were soaked from the knees down. As always, I forgot the fish don't start feeding until 7:30-8:00am, once the sun comes over the mountains and hits the water, until which there are strange, strong currents in the lake that take your boat one way, debris in the water the other way, and your fishing line two different directions at once and then loop and wrap around to form a double bowline knot. So, an hour later, the fish began to jump. Another hour later, they finally stopped jumping, and still my stringer was empty. A little while later, after trying a variety of different baits and lures, I finally caught one with a lure. It looked more like a random catch, based on how he was hooked through the side of the mouth versus the top or bottom.

I had my fish, and I had time, so I figured I would try trolling on my way back to camp. (Trolling, by the way, is fishing by trailing your line behind a moving boat. It's nearly always done with a boat with a quiet electric trolling motor.) So I let my line out, secured my pole, and started paddling. Halfway across the lake, my line grew taut and I reeled in another rainbow (trout, that is). Still not the elusive big monster I've been looking for, but a fish nonetheless. So it was a good morning. Who else do you know who goes trolling from a canoe?

(P.S. - no live pictures of these fish. I had to clean them and was late to work, so I didn't get a chance to take a picture like of the others. I will post a picture of them frozen, though...)