Four days on the river

Whew, what an adventure. Rain, sunny, storms, clear water, muddy. It seemed every hour had a personality of its own. Things I'll remember most; sitting in an old barn on a hay bale waiting out a storm and having a mouse walk around between my feet just like he owned the place. Being waist deep in the river and having a beaver swim up to like four or five feet away before slapping his tail and diving. And even though I caught several 19 inch smallmouth the fish of the trip was for sure the fattest broadest 18 inch smallie I've ever seen who just absolutely hammered a big willowleaf spinnerbait right at the rod tip then tore off in heavy current like a freight train. And the catfish, by trips end I spent more time seining bait and catfishing than anything else. The cats were going nuts in the rising river and you could catch a shovel or a channel on seemingly every cast. No giant cats but just one right after another. Between the rising muddy river and the catfish I felt like Huck Finn and Jim. The smallmouth bait that worked best over the four days was a big curly shad on an underspin jighead just chucked out and winded back like you would a spinnerbait. The biggest smallie was right at 19.5 and between the smallies, an occasional hybrid, four white bass and a whole bunch of cats I'd guess 150 fish were landed over the four days. In four days of river camping in some challenging conditions new gear I tried out and I would highly recommend are Cabela's dry bags, North Face quick dry pants and XPG bug repellant shirts. I've worn the North Face pants on three separate three and four day trips so far this year as well as a dozen other wading trips and find the things are bulletproof and worth spending a little extra on. Another piece of gear I've found I really like having in the Jackson or in the canoe is a Sawyer Squeeze. Having a regular pump water filter is still the best thing to process a bunch of water in camp but having the Sawyer on a water bottle you can just dip in the river as you float along and get a drink is really nice. Between all the rain and portaging the canoe and a bunch of gear around a couple lowheads this was for sure the most physically challenging trip of the year but also probably the one I'll remember best in a few years. warning there are a whole lot of photos even though I didn't even take some photos of some nice smallies because it was raining so hard one day…