I still had a tag I could use on a doe so I decided to spend one last long weekend in the deer woods. Such odd weather and hard to dress for, freezing cold at night then warm by afternoon. About nine thirty down the hill I could see the body of a deer making a beeline right for the deer feeder. Please please please be a doe. Though I was afraid it wasn't since it was walking steady. Which is more like something a buck would do. Sure enough it was a pretty nice eight pointer, almost a twin to the one I'd harvested a couple weeks ago. He walked right up to about 15 feet away and then stopped. You could almost see the look of shock on his face as he stared up into the tree. He walked sideways a few feet staring hard the whole time then just froze and the big stare down began. The deer feeder was really too close to the tree for the muzzleloader but it had worked out great for bowhunting. Finally he actually stepped backwards two or three steps then turned and walked back the way he came, tail up nervous as all heck. A check of the trail camera showed only the buck visiting the feeder the last couple weeks and two more sits up the tree confirmed this so with a buck and a doe already in the freezer I decided to fish the last day and a half of my long weekend.
First up was a dam on the Ohio. Like seemingly everyone else that is fishing a dam on the Ohio right now I was soon completely covered up in saugers. Unfortunately all of them small. They made up for their lack of size with numbers though and I soon lost track of how many hit my pearl ribeye swimbait. Right at dark a couple pretty nice hybrids hit the swimbait as well which made me very happy. Then I felt something and set the hook into something very very heavy. I'd snagged a huge paddlefish. One hundred miles upstream from where I'd caught the other paddlefish this fall. This guy was huge though. I had a really hard time holding it up and controlling it to try and take a photo which is why I have such lousy ones of the fish. Not wanting to keep it out of the water too long I finally decided those would have to do and let the fish go. Then it was back to never ending saugers till it got a bit too cold. Back to deer camp and a roaring fire. It was dead calm and with the fire baking me I leaned back and looked at the huge full moon thru the binoculars. What a magnificent sight. If you have never tried it you are missing out.
The next morning the sun rose on me at the mouth of a pretty good sized trib to the Ohio much closer to home. But not much was going on and I managed only one small bass before finally calling it quits.
That afternoon found me joining Rob on an exploratory trip to a pipe that was pouring warm water out into the river. The photo of the bridge I took about five minutes before the plants security officer pulled up and ran us off. Sigh...it all looked so good too.
All in all a pretty swell weekend in the woods.
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