We had a great day on the river, while not a full day, it was plenty of time for fun and sun. We hit the water about 7:30 in the morning and started the cruise from the landing. We had a decent cruise, hit a long no wake zone and then another cruise down a very quite river. I was shocked at how few were out and about. The landing was pretty busy and full, I was expecting to see a lot of fisherman out, but I think the recent fish fly hatch kept many at home.
When we got to the beach, we had the place to our selves, it was amazing. Usually this place gets packed and there it gets too loud and crowded for me. Since we had the place all to our selves we decided to walk around and explore as much as we could. That way when people came we wouldn't be walking through their camps.
About half way around I managed to find this little small mouth. Clearly needs to bulk up before I consider it to be a meal but happy to see them around. You need the small fish to grow larger to keep the population going.
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Turtle Eggs
They were all over the beach, it was crazy to see so many eggs around
The fishing spot!!
Here is where I did all my fishing. I stood on the rocks in my bare feet and cast out using a yellow sparkly beetle sping. I tried to bring it back parallal with the rocky out cropping about 12 inches away from the rocks, just on the drop off line. I managed to catch a couple. One really small, one missed and then this guy!
BAM whata nice small mouth. This was clearly a keeper if wanted. Legal size and big enough to eat, but I was 100% catch and release today. My best guess 16+ inches, it was a nice fish!!
My oldest son walked over and he also managed to land one, it was a bit smaller and right on the boarder of being big enough to keep. No good photo of that one as the sun gave me too much glare, but he was happy to catch one before we called it quits and walked the other way.
We did manage to catch a few small ones off another point, but nothing big enough to snap a photo of.
On our way back, train bridge turned for a barge.
Pretty cool to see the bridge turn and make the channel open for the big ships to go through, when you think about it, there has to be someone there all the time, or on call to swing the bridge to allow the big river traffic to flow. I think this is the first time I have seen it move for a barge. I have seen it move for another ship that does cruises several times a day for sigh seeing but I always get a kick out of seeing it swing. Crazy to think what it takes to run and build that bridge.
That was it for the day on the water, it was a great way to spend time with the family, even with premium fuel at $5.64 and the fact we burned close to10 gallons of gas. River life is expensive!!!!