Matt and I only had one vehicle until our other buddy Brett made it down later in the night so we were a bit limited in the aspect of river fishing for the day. The plan was to check out a couple of big pools on the river that are very hard to access. We however knew of a super secret road that tunnels through a mountain and leads to a very secluded section of river at the confluence of a larger creek. We had been there once before but it was back in our college days…years ago. Back then there were four of us and we had two trucks both of which were two wheel drive. This dirt road tunnel was about ½ mile long with many pools of water while in complete darkness.

  Matt and I pulled up to the tunnel in my two wheel drive truck and started to go through and about 15 feet in we already had water half way up the wheels and it was getting deeper. With the headlights on I couldn’t even see the end of the water…looks like our first plans are foiled. We backed out trying to decide if the dirt road was different than it was back then or if we were just a lot wiser now and didn’t want to risk getting stuck halfway in a completely dark and water infested tunnel….we decided probably a little of both.

  So with that plan shattered we started to drive further downstream on the river to see if the rivers/creeks are even fishable from the kayaks due to the small amount of rainfall leading up to our arrival. It was more of a reconnaissance than an actual river trip….or was it? Since Brett was coming down tonight we wanted to find one of the rivers/creeks that would be a good river trip in the following days. After getting to a bridge that crosses one of the main rivers of the system we noticed the water seemed to be pretty low compared to the last time we were here over ten years ago. Most of the river in this section is a lot of deep pools separated by some drops/rapids. These drops are what we hoped would have enough water in them to avoid a lot of portaging later in the week when we were hoping to float downstream. We decided to get out the kayaks and at least fish a couple of the pools near the bridge. In most of my previous fishing experiences you don’t catch a lot of fish near any public access bridges/roads…it isn’t until you get away from them do you hook into more and bigger fish. With that said, I didn’t anticipate a lot of action.

  We started in the first pool and noticed that the water was not only bath tub warm, but it was extremely clear with visibility down to several feet. We saw some really big bass cruising around, but they didn’t even bother to look at anything we were throwing and we were trying it all (spinnerbaits, stickbaits, tube & curly tail jigs, crank baits, etc). Since we had all day and we hadn’t hooked into anything in the first pool we decided we would portage around some of the drops and fish a few of the next pools downstream.

On a side note, it was in one of these pools over 10+ years ago I saw a 48”+ musky cruising around under us. I never caught him then, but I knew at some point I would be back and if nothing else try again. Matt fully aware of the 48”+ musky, tied on some big ‘ole jalopy of a lure once we got a few pools down. The entire time I was telling him he was scaring every fish in the river; meanwhile, I was thinking I might get one to jump in my boat out of pure fear of his lure. At very least I was hoping a fish that was swimming scared from his lure would run into the treble hook on the end of the rooster tail I was throwing (which I really do think happened). I also was thinking how just last night Matt would have tried to cast this big ‘ole jalopy lure and he probably would have flipped the kayak (see pt. 1) due to both the sheer weight of casting it and his apprehension of the kayak.

  By this time he was completely comfortable with the kayak and knowing he was going to hook into a musky. Another pool downstream Matt yelled back at me to look at the surface of the water…things were boiling all over. He thought the jalopy was ready for some action…at about the same time something boiled around his lure I saw off to the side of my kayak about a 3’ long gar. I started laughing immediately while telling him what I saw and that he was wasting his time. I have hooked gar in the past in some streams in Ohio and since a lip gripper is useless on those toothy critters they are not something you want in between your legs spinning around in a kayak even if you are lucky enough to actually get a good hook set.

After about 4 hours of fishing we decided to call it a day at the river and go scout some other spots for later in the week. We did end up catching a few smallies, rock bass, and some bluegill, but nothing worth bragging about. With the low water, extreme heat, and our lack of any quantity or size of fish caught our first full day...the week was looking not so bright all of the sudden.