Scenic Saturday

The day started quite early. The plan was to meet with the Estimator and his brother for a late season morning on the water. I didn’t bring any fancy tackle or equipment. The only thing I tossed in the truck was my life jacket, just in case. You can see that it was a fairly magnificent sunrise to start the day. This was from the front porch.

I ripped into town and got myself a McBreakfast and was a few minutes early. I donned a sweater, a jacket and my life jacket. I remembered my sweat pants this trip so I’d be nice and toasty. I even had time to get a sunrise photo at the mouth of the river. Pretty majestic.

We got away nearly on time and started out into the lake but the minor breeze was creating some rolling swells and my guts hate that kind of thing at the best of times, let alone right after I mauled a sack of food into them. They had the same idea and we ended up trolling up the river. We got past most of the houses and switched motors. I went out the back of the boat and they covered the front and side. We trolled along, enjoying the serene beauty of fall on the calm, glassy surface of the brown, muddy river. Even if we didn’t catch anything we all agreed that the morning would be considered a win from that experience alone.

But we did catch some fish. We played around with a couple different setups as we smoothly sailed along. I didn’t realize but my two soft plastics in my small travel tackle kit had melted and partially fused together. That was cool and a bit funny though it ruined the action of both. They were both paddle tails and neither swam like they should anymore. I tried some worms, a chatter bait and a jig head with a minnow. The Estimator broke the ice and I decided to switch to my Mepps spoon.

I’ve always kind of hated spoons but thought I’d try a few as we trolled. I ended up catching three fish on the first one I tried. We only caught golden eyes, locally called moon eyes or even white white fish. Over the course of an hour I nabbed these. They are known for having especially bland flavour so we put them all back for the next angler. You can see from the last picture what the spinner/spoon looked like. Probably more of a spinner now that I think of it.

I emerged from the boat as awkwardly as I had boarded, low water makes a big step in and out, and I went about my next task. I had a substantial but delivery to make. A friend of the family was opening a new location for her store and I had to figure out where it was and how to deliver there. I popped in and found her. The place was quite busy so I ended up piling the fifteen cases in the back myself. Then learned I’d piled them in the wrong corner. I moved them all and went back in to give the paperwork. Money was forced upon me. I tried to deny it but it was becoming a scene and there were customers. I returned home to a pair of roast beast samidges and some water. After lunch I retreated to my room for some MSF and fell into a devastating nap. I struggled to pull myself out of it and get gussied up in time for our dinner guests. My only remaining grandparent and my aunt and uncle were coming. Essentially the local family from Mother’s side. We had a nice time visiting and eventually dug into an impressive meal. The potato wedges that the Big T favours seem to always take much longer than he anticipates. Three times running anyways. It was a tasty feast that they slaved over all afternoon.

After the meal and the dishes the old croakanole board was pulled out and we had a few games. I watched the first and then enjoyed winning the next two. By the end I was getting my touch back. It was fun. We watched an episode of Big Sky, a show my parents watch, and then I scrambled to bed around half nine. Sleep took me around ten.