On Saturday I went fishing at the trout lake with my dad. I decided to bring the kayak because- um- why not. It ended up being a really good idea in the end though.
So I started the trip trying to carry a 40 lb. 10 ft boat along the shore as inconspicuously as possible while trying to find an open area to put all of our gear. On the way I kept getting people looking at me with an expression that either said "What on earth is he doing?" or "I want one!"
When we found an open area, I noticed that the water was really shallow- way too shallow to get in my boat without getting wet. The natural course of action was to go out into the woods and look for a log that could help me get farther out into the water, and that is what I did. I found a flimsy, thin, and rotting log that was just perfect for the job. When I put it in the water I observed that the chances of me making it out on the log without falling in did not look very good. Instead we (me and my faja) took the boat to one of the jetties that nobody was using and I jumped in from there.
My arsenal of weapons while in the boat included my shiny new rod, one of my light-action rods, grippers, a box of lures, a stringer, a fillet knife, my notebook, my handy-dandy pliers, and leaves- lots of leaves. When I got out in the water the first thing I did was set up a worm on my smaller rod. The second thing that I did was snag the lure from the new rod onto the line of the small one, and I had to deal with an evil backlash. I might have spent 15 minutes just trying to cut it out. I didn't take very long to do that again, but this time I just worked out the knot and it only took like 10 minutes. Well I had established that I needed to be more careful with my new rod and I was ready to fish (except for real this time).
I didn't get anything in the open water, so I tried going towards the corner of the lake. Well that decision paid off because I quickly had the first fish of the day, and the first kayak-caught fish ever. I was almost in casting distance by that time and I thought "Well if I caught this fish near shore- near shore must be a good place to fish." When I had moved down the bank a good ways, I saw a friend from church- Chuck Bartlett. It looked like he had brought some of his' older sons with him, but it was hard to tell exactly who. Anyway I started moving back towards the corner when I got a hit. Trout fight in a unique way. Instead of picking a direction and pulling hard in that direction, they just go into panic mode and fly forward as fast as they can- even though they can't tell witch way is forward. I didn't have it very long before it spat the hook. After throwing up my hands and crying a single tear, I got back to fishing. Before long, I had another one that was a good 15 inches. It came within a few feet of mybadself before it tossed the hook back at me. This time Mr. Bartlett saw it and he was just as disappointed as I was when I lost it. I continued combing the shoreline without any success until I decided to check on my dad.
My dad said that he had caught nothing the whole time. He said we could stay a little longer so I moved to the other side of the lake. I quickly had a bite that lasted only a few seconds before leaving me with that one look that I get when I get flustered. I moved a bit to the left because I didn't want to get in the way of the people on the docks. When I came back I got another bite in the exact same place as the first one. This time I made sure to be extra-careful during the fight because I had noticed that most of the time when a hook came loose it was because the fish went airborne. This time I kept the fish in the water and hooked it up on the stringer (Yeah I guess it doesn't do any good to release the fish in that lake because they are destined to die anyway).
I started to move back towards my dad when I hooked into the highest jumper that I had seen in a long time. He quickly lost the hook and went on his' merry way. That was the last fish that gave either of us any attention that day.
I learned on that trip that you need to keep moving if you want to catch trout in a kayak. I also learned that the second worm-toting rod is worthless, and I am really bad at cleaning fish.
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