What it's all about.....

[Aquaman01]

So, I got this good friend named Geoff. He's Godfather to both my daughters, makes great conversation and we get along great. Our wives are pals...our kids are pals - heck, even our dogs are pals.

We've never fished together, if you can believe that, and yesterday we made it out and took my boy out with us. We went up the Mississippi from Elk River to Osseo and had a blast. We beached and waded, anchored and bait-fished, trolled and cast. We caught a variety of fish for both the fry-pan and sport. Everybody had a great time.

At one point the current was gently lapping around our anchored boat, a heron was stabbing up a fish nearby, the Doritos bag was fresh enough that all the chips were still big triangles, my son was studying the effect of current on his fingertips and I was really digging the sunrays that had just crept over the trees to warm my head when Geoff says to me "Did you read about the (insert news topic here)"? and I said "nope". After a brief pause he says to me "I'm sure it's irrelevant to our current situation. Come to think of it...everything is."

Yeah Geoff - and that's what it's all about.

INFO -

Our biggest smallies (16" - 18") came from deeper holes while cast-jigging for walleye through eelgrass and rocks in 10+ feet of water using TJ's Tackle Salty Grubs in white and natural. Trolling deep diving Raps along the levy produced only small smallmouth, with same results for casting spinnerbaits and buzzbaits at the shore.

Walleyes responded best to a 1/2 crawler drifted into moderate current 10+ feet deep on a simple splitshot rig. The Boy (6) hauled in 3 carp averaging 24" each on white yard-grubs & garden worms impaled on a #2 circle hook.

With bloody gas prices what they are, we had to save some dough by using as much wild bait as possible. Garden worms came from putting shock-rods into last year's garden plot. Grubs came from digging under yard junk, and crawdads were harvested the usual way before dawn from the body of water we were fishing in.

Oh yeah - the water is VERY, VERY skinny, and the launch ramp is VERY, VERY dry! Upriver we had to drag the 14' alumibeater about 20 yards across 9" riffles, and downriver we with the motor in neutral, skeg clunking the gravel as a tiller.

[Cooter]

Glad to hear you had a wonderful time on the water with family and friends!

[FOOT]

Aqua, that is a nice stretch of the river and I have floated it several times years ago when I lived in Bloomington.

The first time I had a 14' Alumacraft with a 7 1/2 hp OB. Right away I realized I didn't need the motor and in fact I sheered a pin and had forgotten the extra pins in the station wagon.

2 friends, a little food and drink, fish biting - what a way to spend a Saturday and re-charge the batteries.

[subzero]

Saturday I crossed the river at Clearwater and there was a group wading out to the center sandbar fishing. It looked as fun as your day was.

[huntingislife]

I had a weekend like that about a month ago in Bismarck, ND. We went out on the Missouri River to try and catch some wally's. We shot a few carp on the way out of the back channel before we got into the main channel. When we pulled up to the first current break, I dropped a jig down and instantly picked a walleye. We were about 8 feet from a sandbar that had a steep edge that dropped to 19'. So we decided to beach the boat and let the lines hang out into the channel. The sandbar had a nice deep pool in it for swimming, even though the side channels of the river were plenty warm to hop in. What a fun day, chillin on the sandbar and catching a fish about every 15 minutes. Another fun aspect too was the variety of fish we caught in the same spot. We caught walleye, sauger, white bass, shovelnose sturgeon, northern, and a goldeye. Ran out of minnows and called it a day. Of course we went back out to the same spot the next day to do it again.