What lies beneath...

I didn't intend to come back tonight.

The plan was to take a drive and fish another lake but some conflicts in scheduling at home made me reconsider.  It's a common enough problem.  Drive further for better fishing but decrease the time on the water...or stay close and get as much fishing in as possible.  It seems like I choose the latter more often than the former.

I decided to work down the shoreline and was paying attention to snapping turtle heads popping up and disappearing in the low easy waves.  I was waist deep and moving slow as I pulled out my camera and started taking a few zoomed shots.  I was hoping to get close enough to the bobbing turtles for a decent shot in the low light.  They kept popping up and then going back down.

In the back of my brain I was thinking about the story I told EB and JP the other night after fishing:

When I first moved here, my wife and I took the canoe out for a paddle on this lake to see what we could see.  Floating about 50' off shore in almost the exact location I was now standing, a large snapping turtle caught my attention as it clattered down the rocky bank, hit the water and bee-lined directly to the canoe, ramming it with it's nose.  It was obvious that it was not rushing out to make friends.

There I stood with a number of my important body parts below water line, trying to sneak up on snapping turtles...the thought was still bouncing around my brain when something rammed into my leg.  Thinking turtle but hoping carp I kicked at it and I am pretty sure I said a "word" out loud.  Whatever it was rammed me again prompting me to clear out quick. I didn't stop until my thighs were above waterline.

I headed back to my usual post on the lake.   A place where in previous nights nothing had rammed into my leg underwater.  I had a number of short strikes and popped a few small white bass.  At 10:30 after a couple dozen unanswered casts, I pointed my camera up at the half-moon, snapped a few pics, waded to shore with my lower extremities still intact and headed home.

This is the picture I was snapping when I got rammed in the leg.  Further inspection of the photo has changed my mind about the critters I was looking at.  The pointed snout suggests that they weren't snapping turtles but instead Spiny Softshell Turtles. The DNR's website says this about them "...spiny softshells are often aggressive when seized, and can inflict painful bites."  Good to know.