Me and Kimmie and Ariel went to Lake Saint Claire on Sunday on probably the last fishing excursion of the year. The weather was a beautiful 68 degrees. Kimmie and I called around and tried to find a boat for us to rent. We found a place called Jimmy’s Baits and Boats, but it was so close to the end of the season as well as there was a high wind, so he said he probably wouldn’t be renting boats any more this year. He said he’d probably start up again in April. But I asked him where to do some shore fishing and he said to check out the Harley-Ensign DNR access point. He said to go all the way to the tip of the peninsula and that people have caught walleye and pike from there.
We left my house around 3:30pm. Annalisa and Kelly were still on their high from the awesome mom 2 mom sale they hit up earlier in the day. So they were kind enough to watch all the babies while we went fishing. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. We thought the sun would set around 5:45pm, so we had a couple hours to try and beat Hong’s 23” bonita. We started out fishing the Texas rig. In the end, I snagged twice and I think Ariel did too. I don’t think Kimmie snagged at all, or if she did, she had a 20# test line so the line wasn’t breaking, the hook would bend first. I think it did actually. We set up shop a couple hundred feet away from some duck hunters with their camo and guns and fake ducks and duck calls.
It was looking like the most we were getting from this fishing trip was some laughs and a beautiful sunset that turned the sky purple. The laughs came when Ariel met his desperation point. Nothing was working and Ariel heard that the big carp like corn. So he proceeded to take a huge hook and he ran the hook through a bunch of pieces of corn. So essentially he had a corn hook. He held it up and all I saw was a desperate man that was feeling the effects of a 2009 season going by without himself or any of us catching any legit keepers. So corn hook it was. I compounded the acts of desperation when I turned to the water and saw what I thought to be a very big very slow moving fish. I excitedly pointed it out to Ariel who excitedly cast corn hook in front of it. Had it been a huge fish rather than a piece of driftwood impersonating a fish, I can’t imagine that it would not have gobbled up corn hook instantly. But, alas, good times are just good times that could have been better times had we just caught a huge fish.
(sigh)
However, we did bump in to these two old men that were willing to share a lot of general fishing knowledge about Lake Saint Claire. They said that we were generally in the right place, but we need a boat or a float tube to get to where the schools of small mouth run. They said we just need to get about a hundred feet off shore and the half square mile or so of the water that leads into the bay is one of the best places to fish in the whole lake. He said come back between the middle of April and the middle of June and fish the white 3” tube lure. He said to make sure you let it crawl real slow on the bottom and the small mouth bass love it. He also went on to tell us how where the channels are below the water that the fish run along. He also told us how float tubes help you get to where the fish are. He tried to point out the importance of finding the weed beds where the small mouth lay their eggs as well as the bull rush that provide lots of cover for the large fish.
Unless some magic happens up north in Cheboygan, I really don’t see us being able to beat Hong’s bonita. I thought for sure we’d catch something that day. It’s a tough loss and it’s going to be a long winter. But my theory is that Christ chose fisherman because even though there should be absolutely no hope, we hope.
We’re not gonna let one or two or fifty-three fishless fishing trips get us down. We forge on to 54! Those are the kind of guys He needed. That’s my theory at least.
One day I will catch that 30” salmon. On that day you’ll see a grown man cry.
