Pacemaker Fishing Forum

At the last minute, played hooky.  Turns out it was another hot one.  Float started out a little later than we planned.  Sun was up.

Never done this stretch of the river in a kayak.  Water was clear and almost glassy



First fish on a grub almost instantly



Water was very low but floatable.  Would not want to do this stretch in a "real" boat this time of the year



Stopped to stretch my legs, got a drink and a bite to eat, next thing I know we had a visitor.  Pulled up to about 5 feet of us and started cleaning itself like we weren't even there



As the day went on, the clouds came.  The fish liked the clouds.  Temps went down, slight wind picked up.





Here's where it got exciting.  Came up to a ledge and it only looked like the ledge went out about 15' from the shore.  I could hear the rapids booming.  They were loud.  We were confused that only a small section of the river produced that much noise?  The rest of the river to the right of the rapid was calm as could be - but still that booming noise confused us.  My buddy took the right thinking it was the safest.  Thinking is the optimal word here.  When in doubt, paddle harder and I'm glad I did. I decided to run the rapid and it was a solid class II with haystacks higher than my head.  Glad I paddled harder at the start because I punched through 2 haystacks - safely - and when I pulled out of the rapid, soaked!, saw where the noise was coming from.  Started yelling at my buddy but he couldn't hear me.  There was a 3' diagonal drop we did not see.  He finally got what I was trying to say, paddled to the end of the drop and portaged over it.  Now we understood where all that noise was coming from.



Guess these people didn't?  The bow of the boat had a softball sized hole in it.  Hopefully the people in the boat survived.



We also found a trailer on the other side of the river below the rapid.  Not sure how this got there? - but we are assuming it was on some riverfront property and was washed away when the river was high.



We were under the impression the float was only 4 miles, but it took us all day.  We're estimating over 7 miles if not 8 from some of the maps on the website.