Grin

Friday Night I paddled a Canoe race with my daughter.  We are not canoe racers, but I had two things in my hip pocket.
1. I grew up near the boundary waters and canoes have always been part of my life.
2. My daughter, 11, is as tough as they come. 
I'd love to report that at 11 we've spent hours paddling and I knew that she could do it.
But the truth is, we have spent more time in the Battle Skiff than in my canoe.  I had no idea how she'd do.

She blew my mind.  3.5 miles of paddling and she never, not once, quite digging in.  I couldn't have been more proud.  We finished 69th out of more than 200 canoes....most of them with two adults on board.

That is how the weekend started.  The weather was looking crappy and I was still feeling pretty good about my outing with Mr T catching musky and smallmouth from last week.  My wife mentioned that we had some yard work to do.  The winter had killed a few plants/shrubs in the yard and she suggested that I do something about it.

I never intended to make it the weekend project but once I start something I have a very tough time stopping until it is done.

By Sunday afternoon I had a pile of deadness in my driveway that I was sure would require a trailer to haul away, and I'd borrowed my neighbor's chainsaw to drop a tree (Thanks Tim!)  I still have a healing blister and sore shoulders from spending 2 hours pulling a stump out of the ground.  Sunday was a trip to the local nursery to procure the necessary greenery to get my yard back into shape.  I dug, fertilized and planted until, once again, we are the envy of the gardening community (not likely).

At 1:00 PM on Sunday, exhauseted from my domestic exploits,  I checked my phone and found a message from Kyle Zempel from Black Earth Angling Company . Over the past month or so we'd been messaging back and forth on Facebook about his recently acquired boat.   He wanted to make it battle ready for the smallmouth fishery he guides on and he ran a couple things past me. 

The message indicated that he was going to be taking said boat out for a trial run at 3:00 and he kindly invited me along.

The canoe race, the planting, the blisters, I'd paid the price.
My wife patted me on the head and said that I was free to go.

So I went.

I rolled in about 2:45 PM and Kyle was wrenching on his boat.
I suppose that I could have been disappointed that it wasn't water ready and that we weren't going to be casting flies in the next 15 minutes...except that I love wrenching on boats.
Kyle had planned and designed some killer oar lock mounts that needed to be installed and his new oars needed to be assembled.  Maybe it was an hour of tinkering but honestly if it would have been 3 hours I'd have been good.  Rigging boats is a sweet part of the process. 

I'm not sure what time he backed down the launch into the river, but before long he had his jet fired up and soon I was standing on the bow casting a streamer to the bank.

The first fish followed shortly thereafter.  After a whoop and a couple of quick photos, Kyle spent 10-15 minutes trying to revive it.

It died.

It's always interesting fishing with new people...the perspectives and experiences that are shared, that bring two anglers together, are exactly the same and entirely different.  As he was working the fish in the current to revive it, Kyle told me about how a smallmouth will "color up" if they are overly stressed and aren't going to make it.  He held the fish in the current and spoke as I envisioned a "lit up" billfish.

A few moments later he called my attention to the fish's color.  As he held it, trying to get oxygen into its gills and waiting for the telltale flick of its tail indicating that it was revived, lively and ready to go on with its life, it transformed.  It colored up.  If you've ever seen a smallmouth from a rocky, woody, tannin stained river, they are dirty black/copper.  As he held the fish for me to see, it transformed to a truly copper scaled creature with dark side banding.  I suggested that it looked like a painting.

"This fish isn't going to make it", he said.

I put down the rod and my camera and asked if I might try reviving it.  I too held the fish and moved it to get oxygen to its gills.  The fish was rigid.  No tense muscles, not flick of the tail.  We tried for what seemed like 20 minutes.   I relaxed my grip and it turned sideways, ready to float.   Though it bummed me out, I dispatched it with a nalgene bottle thump to the head.  Kyle said he'd eat it which made me feel only slightly better about the truth.

Kyle said, "It doesn't happen often, but it happens".

It's a blood sport after all.

I'm 43 years old and I learned something new and something valuable.  Something else to notice, to look for.

Slipping downstream with a fish in the cooler,  we decided that we'd trade the rowing station, fish for fish.  And we did.  We each caught some decent small mouth and each one (thankfully) flicked their tails and swam off after release.  I know that Kyle has been having success on his river and I was only enviously surprised/thrilled when he guided me to a measured 18" fish.  That might be the largest I've caught on this stretch of the river...  After a couple of quick photos, it too swam off under a full head of steam.

The sun started to drop and we'd set out to do what we set out to do.  The oars worked out well, we got a chance to fish together, we caught fish and it never rained on us.

I'd had a great time and realized only after I got home and looked through my photos why.  The boat was great, a true river craft.  The fishing was actually pretty good, despite the crazy fronts blowing through.  But, the real reason that the day was success was because I'd shared the afternoon with a guy who understands why I fly fish.  Check out every picture of this guy.  He puts the "grin" in grip and grin....

Thanks Kyle.