With school starting back up, I figured I better get the kid out fishing one more time. He’s really in to stream fishing these days and I hadn’t fished deer creek in ages so we headed over to Potato Patch Campground. It is a nice little wooded spot and, being mid-week, we found it almost empty.
‘MERICA…
There’s a decent trail right to the creek from camp..
The fish and the terrain made it tough on us but we worked though some small, put still pretty wild ‘bows…
To get to a few better fish…
Ya can’t ask for a much prettier place to wet your line than places like Deer Creek Falls…
Or the base of this little fall just down stream…
…or really just about anywhere in the canyon…
Another great outing with my boy, who’s growin’ up way too darn fast!
Took a quick run to Butt Lake for a little father/son fishing get away; hoping for the hex hatch to be kicking.
Found a nice shady spot to set up and all systems on the ‘pod worked after too long of a layoff…
Some quick protein for the first eve’s outing…
All staged up to get on the water…
They have really been draining this lake and I don’t think the fish are happy about it. This, combined with very little in the way of a hex hatch made the fishing pretty tough. The boy persevered and stuck a couple the first eve though…
While I foul-hooked about a 5lb squawfish…that lake REALLY mistreats me sometimes…
…and that’s our ‘yaks WAY down there…just about as low as I’ve ever seen the lake…
When we started loading we discovered his boat had a good bit of water in it, presumably due to this…must have been from the tire on our little trailer on a previous outing…don’t know how we didn’t see it earlier!
Wednesday was a nice morning so we took a drive. Ended up at Butt Creek for a bit. The boy hooked one under this bridge…
Where he proceeded to scare me just a tad as he chased the thing down a small rapid…
…but ultimately landed it safely…
Pretty ‘bow…
Some gourmet camp cookin’ before the second night out..
Gorilla tape over the hole and back at it…
James had a similar success rate and I had a similar failure rate the second eve…
Darn beautiful on the water both evenings though…
All in all, another great trip. Now time to learn how to plastic weld something other than duct tape on that poor ‘yak. I can’t afford another boat right now…lol…
Took a little paddle on Butt Lake last night to see if the hex hatch was kickin’ yet.
Gotta get nurished first. Pretty setting for chow, other than the big ol’ power lines (it IS a PG&E lake though)…
The hatch wasn’t really explosive like it can be but it has definitely started. The kid out-fished me 2 to zip with a couple 2.5lb class fish (I’d guess the first one may have been pushing 3…he called it his “PB”…apparently “Personal Best” is WAY too long to say) and it was a beautiful evening. Alas, my cheapo cellphone is TERRIBLE in low light but I did what I could…
That last fish was caught at 9:20 PM. We figured that was a good enough time to start the half mile paddle back to the ol’ Dodge. It was still a beautiful evening out and the campfires in the distance were the only indicator that we weren’t totally alone out there. By the time I nursed a brewski as we loaded up we cinched the ‘yaks down under just about a First Quarter moon at about 10:20 PM….
Here’s the video footage, such that I could get…
There’s no shame in my game. I’m gonna pick up a few little tubes like he was using before we give it one more go this evening!
Last weekend James and I had a weekend of “bachin'” it while Mel was out of town so we decided on a father-son fishing weekend. Mel had the grocery-getter and I wanted low range to “walk” that last half mile of ugly road to Echo Lake so I called in the ol’ Dodge…
The spot I really wanted is currently an island since the lake is so high but this spot worked out great too…
Took less than a hour to set the ‘pod up and get the ‘yaks splashed. At that point, it took less than 15 minutes to get our first double hookup…good start…
On our lunch/beer break the first day, we met our only camp neighbor, Jim and his really cool Carolina dog (AKA American Dingo) Carmen. Jim’s an interesting fellow with lots of worldly experience he don’t mind talking about…
Jim asked us to get him some dinner and this was no issue at all…the brookie fishing was red hot…
Slayin’ all the fish on day 1 really worked up an appetite so I busted out the 10″ oven and whipped up a batch of prison food…
Our nation’s symbol, the bald-ass buzzard, cruised by looking for HIS dinner too…
Life was good relaxing by a hot fire sipping a homebrew while James did a bit of bank fishing…
Carmen decided to “help” James land one…I decided to add further “help” by grabbing some phone video….half a dozen homebrews probably helped with the amusement…..
Carmen’s NEVER sat by a fire, has she? (she spent more time in our camp than she did in her dad’s)…
The next morning was a tad brisk but beautiful. Life is good when the ‘yaks are already rigged and ready to go…
James tried to stick one while I had my coffee….
The ol’ girl walked us in and, equally importantly back OUT!
Just gettin’ out in nature is awesome. Slayin’ some fairly decent little brooks is a sweet bonus…here’s about half our fish condensed into a little over 5 minutes…It was an epic weekend for sure!!!
Took one more shot at fishing the hex hatch last night with my gal. It ended up being more of a scenic ride than a fishing trip.
This little gal seemingly followed us along the bank for an hour or so…
One of these days I’m going to get a decent shot of an eagle. However, they always seem to show themselves when I don’t have a camera, the light is too low (as in this case), or any number of other “wrong” situations for photos. I got a couple fair snapshots of this one though, considering I couldn’t get any shutter speed and the boat was bouncing a bit at the time…
As to the fishing, the hex didn’t really start hatching until it was damn near too dark to see. Mel had never seen them really popping though so she did get to see the spectacle before we left at least. Earlier in the afternoon, she got one little smallmouth trolling a crankbait (she then trolled the smalley for a bit, not knowing he was still there), I got about a 3 pound rainbow trout (on another bass crankbait) after it was too dark for usable video, and I got this damn thing which was a fun fight until I realized what it was (he’s lucky I didn’t have a knife handy or I would have fed him to the damn eagle…lol)…
Any way you slice it, it was a wonderful evening with my gal!
Yesterday was the full moon on the summer solstice. That doesn’t happen too often. What should one do to commemorate it? Go check out the hexagenia hatch on Butt Lake of course! I took the boy for a father/son boat ride. We started fishing around 5pm, fighting the up-lake wind that seems to happen in summer afternoons on that lake. Caught one dink smallmouth not worthy of a photo while the sun was out. However, as hoped, the lake laid down as the sun got low and those big ol’ mayflies started showing themselves. We’d prepared for it earlier in the day by tying some marabou jigs to fish under floats (I think bass-fishers call it “float and fly”). I missed more than I hooked (I think there were some smallish fish in the area doing “drive-bys”) but the spectacle is always fun to watch and I did stick a couple fish…
When the float went down again I figured I’d let the boy do battle with one…
But the boy’s first hex hatch smallmouth was sort of funny lookin’…
Shortly after this fish it got tough to see our bobbers so we watched that big ol’ moon rise over the lake and headed back to the ramp.
I took James down to Redding this past weekend to, among other things, mooch a guided fishing trip from gramma and grandpa. The mooching paid off and we found some good kokanee trolling on Whiskeytown.
The trip also provided an opportunity for me to test the towing capacity on my new grocery-getter. Grandpa’s boat weighs in at 3500 pounds or so on the trailer and my baby SUV pulled it nicely…
The fish were biting well as most boats in the area were catching fish. That, combined with the fact that Ernie is absolutely the Kokanee Killer, and it didn’t take long before James was wearing his arms out…
After the first dozen or so, the skipper DID finally let us deckhands reel in a few….
Grandpa’s boat is faster than dad’s, as you can see by the kid’s hair…
Now, time for the work to begin. There’s only room at THAT table for 2. I had to stand back taking pictures and drinking beer (I figured it was the least I could do)!…
I can do this but I’m at about a 3 fish per hour pace. They would have rotted by the time I was done!
Looks like dinner…
Here is a video for anyone interested. The GoPro was running for 3 hours. I trimmed it down to 13 minutes. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, the “meat and potatoes” (or, at least the meat) starts right at the 10 minute mark…
It is almost impossible to get the kid to be patient on a slow morning but I finally talked him into making a few more casts and he hooked one. Hopefully that (and the new winter boots I just ordered for the cold feet he complained of) will encourage him to stay with it in the future. Knowin’ the showoff he can be it may have helped that the family up the bank who hadn’t caught anything had to come look too!
I took a little drive yesterday in the hopes of catching a fish and taking a picture. Took one pretty fair photo on the way to the lake (Flickr image, clicking takes you there to a larger version)…
…and I caught a few fish (with a bonus “flying trout”)….
I’d say mission accomplished.
Pictures and commentary about the antics and activities of "Mike and his!"
