Only a week ago my girl was getting home from two surprise days in the hospital. While she’s still not 100% and will have further testing in weeks to come, it was time to get her out of the house. She worked this week and if you can work you can certainly fly fish.
We loaded the Ruby Van late yesterday to head camping but just as I was hooking up the boat a thunderstorm kicked in. I googled the forecast and the call was for severe storms and hail overnight. Well, we just built a garage to help protect our groovy van so instead of leaving last night and making it subject to the hazardous elements, we stayed home and left this morning. I’m so glad we did because the storms were bad all night and heavy rain didn’t stop today until around 9 AM.
Once we finally hit the road it got pretty nice. We drove about an hour to drop the blue bathtub (our Idaho boat) on a new lake. Granny already announced she wasn’t fishing hard today so this lake looked ideal for an adventure that not only involved a lake but also a journey up the river that feeds it. We could basically do more puttering around with 3.3 horse instead of actual casting.
Puttering is exactly what we did. We ran the entire length of this lake (two miles) and surprisingly, due to all the rain and highwater, we were able to ride upriver at least another mile. While fishing stunk, the scenery was fantastic. We saw beavers, deer, I can’t confirm it but possibly a bear that streaked off a bank before I could ID it. A few loons and a bunch of good spring birds from phoebe to orioles. It was just an all-out nice day.
Though we only landed one rock bass when we were fishing, Granny jumped a smallie on a popper to reckon with. I’ve caught a lot in my day and this fish wasn’t an inch shorter than 19”. She may have had a 20” plus river smallmouth which is probably why he escaped. River smallies, as mentioned last week, are tough competitors.
We ended the day with the Ruby Van parked at a stunning camp. It’s become our favorite since we arrive here in WI. While the mosquitoes were horrific, as to be expected in June in Wisconsin, our new grill helped cook a steak to die for. We are camped and plan to be back on the water first thing tomorrow.
Great to see Granny fishing!