alone

I'm not by nature social. I'd rather swallow a fishbone than share my innermost feelings with more than one or two people on earth. If you know my family you know the loss we have suffered. If not there isn't any reason to go into it here. But the entire process had left me hollow and feeling like a trapped animal that needed to get away. Work was generous and after a day and the weekend there was still bereavement time. Which I planned to use away from people. I always when things have gotten really bad retreated to the woods. Sunlight thru the trees, the sound of water, the chores of making camp give my soul more peace than the best intentioned company. 
A few strokes of the paddle and I was away just as dawn first began to brighten the sky. I really did little paddling, mostly just to keep the kayak floating true as the woods slowly came awake and birdsong filled the air.  A muskrat slipped off a bank into the water and a bit further on a duck did a broken wing act to lead me past what were surely hidden ducklings. A heron lifted into the air with a croak of protest as I reached where I wanted to be. Here the river whooshed thru a riffle that was probably the fastest one for miles. Just the kind of riffle that would draw fish in the heat of July.  The morning saw four nice hybrids including one dandy and a decent smallmouth come to a curly shad fished in the seam where the fast water of the riffle rubs the slow water of the downstream eddy. As the sun climbed over the trees I unpacked the few things I'd brought in the yak. Along with tackle I'd brought a tarp, some para cord, a ferro rod, a knife, and a sawyer squeeze to filter water. The knife I've been carrying on trips like this lately is a new Buck with rubber handles but the same blade as the classic 110 hunter which has probably dressed more big game and been on more adventures than any knife ever made. A sawyer squeeze is a game changing gadget that reinvented water filtration. It screws on an empty pop bottle or water bottle and is pretty much all thru hikers carry any more on the long trails like the PCT or AT.  I don't know how many times I've watched hikers like Jessica Dixie Mills on you tube fill the thing from green ponds with cattle standing in them or even from roadside ditches. Filtering the comparatively clean water from our rivers is a piece of cake. 
Back in the trees but still close enough to hear the water I set up the tarp. With no rain in the forecast it was more to help the trees shade out the heat more than anything. I'm slowly learning a few more knots than bloodknots and palomars and I've found the prusik knot is the most useful knot ever for setting up a shelter. If you use one it's well worth learning this useful but simple knot. 
I wondered up into the woods to turn over some logs and rake back some leaves to find some bait to hopefully catch a channel for lunch. Alongside a tiny trickle of water in a dark hollow I saw the familiar leaves of ginseng. A lot of ginseng, maybe fifty or sixty plants in a spot twenty or thirty yards long. I'll have to remember this spot come fall. I knew from this I probably didn't have to worry much about talking to people if a spot was  visited seldom enough to have this much ginseng.
Once I'd gotten a few worms it wasn't much trouble catching a channel. After filleting I baked it on a flat rock sit on the coals of a twig fire. 
After sitting a bit I wandered back down to the stream. Now it was hot. Really hot. And believe it or not one of my favorite times to catch smallmouth. About a week ago I'd even said this in an interview for the Yak Legion podcast. You see when the river gets as warm as bathwater a basses metabolism is in high gear but the places they will feed in midday are few and far between. So you know where the best fish are going to be. If there are big smallmouth in the section of river you fish you can bet the farm they are in a pocket smack dab in the fastest water you can find in your stream. And I mean really fast, not kinda fast but sweep you off your feet fast. In midsummer no spot is too fast or too shallow as long as it is roaring dangerous sweep you off your feet in a foot of water fast. Exactly the kind of water that had the hybrid stripers up here at daylight. I used a three inch grub on a 1/4 ounce jighead in about 15 inches of roaring fast water which had some big rocks in it to create spots for the fish to lie. 
I honestly thought the fish was a big channel or a small shovelhead for the first half of the fight as it didn't jump but instead just bent the rod double in dogged runs in the fast water. Then It came up and things got real exciting for a bit. A few quick pics ( I posted two of this one fish)  and I knelt in the water and held the fish for a second till with a stroke of its tail it hit me with a face full of water and shot off back into the river. No tape measures, no scales, it certainly wasn't that type of trip and besides that fish was absolutely perfect no matter what its size.