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| My first one in years... |
If legal this time of year, we would have been more
successful deer hunting or turkey hunting!
We spooked two sets of twin fawns as we pulled into the camp ground that
serves as Gorsuch’s North Branch home base, and later on the river, we all
watched a massive buck, roughly a 10-pointer, I swear, crash back up the bank
after his warm, muddy drink midday. A
family of turkey trotted around the campground in the morning, and a couple
eagles were also making a ruckus later in the morning, likely pissed that they
have had no fresh fish filets in weeks and grown tired of picking on the
quickly decomposing carcass of a deer who underestimated her swim earlier in
the month. Hard to tell in all the muddy
water and buried structure, but the river itself looks beautiful and plenty
productive on the right day. Surrounded by the Endless Mountains, with numerous
small tributaries, likely holding trout, the river has a different character
than the main stem, even the West Branch, with which I am just a little bit more
familiar.
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| Endless Mountains still in haze late in the afternoon. We had two hours of fog in the morning. |
Stan got on the board early with the best fish of the
day, probably all of two or two and a half pounds, tossing a chatterbait, and
in over-confidence we released it without a pic. He also landed a good channel cat with the
same lure shortly thereafter. In the
stained water, our anticipation for a large bass nearly held until Chris
slipped the net under the whiskered interloper.
After that, we caught plenty of fish, but nothing of note besides my
first walleye in many years, and even that was small, albeit respectable for
this particular river, I suppose. The
pitch counter surpassed 50 fish for the three fisherman aboard, but on a good
day, I doubt the captain would have clicked for an 8 inch smallmouth, dig? Chris is a good captain and good company,
however, and he worked hard, covering a lot of spots that should have
produced. Ambush spots, especially, came
up empty, so falling water had fish on the move or hunkered in unpredictable spots,
perhaps beginning to abandon the refuges they sought in the many spikes of
water the summer. We tossed plugs,
spinnerbaits, and every soft plastic in the Fitt Premium Lures line, but
established no patterns on color or presentation besides slow and deep, which in
muddy conditions means a lot of lost lead and plastic. Ken sent me two pics the next day with the
curt message, Yesterday sucked. My
tired, dehydrated body concurs, but we did go fishing, so it wasn’t all bad.
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| Ned rig and the undisputed king of poor man's yacht rock navigating the early morning soup. |
