FISHING FARMERS

   “Let’s take Robert to the river and see if we can catch some bass.” Wayne said over the phone. "He has been busy farming but has an evening free to fish." 

Spring and all the hunting is over, most of the “honey-do’s” caught up, I was more than ready to try my hand at fishing.
You’d think being a fishing guide would make one never want to fish again, but I can hardly wait for the next fishing trip in the spring.
 I met Robert at Wayne’s place and we loaded our poles into his jet boat.
 Launching the boat became our first adventure. The river was down a couple of feet, so finding deep enough water to get the boat off the trailer was a mission.
“On back, On Back,” Robert guided Wayne. His truck was puffing water in the exhaust pipe and the boat still set solid on the trailer. We tried upstream, mid stream, and finally found a little drop down stream. With me in the boat, Robert on a rope and Wayne backing the truck we finally managed to get the boat floating and the truck and trailer stowed on the bank.
We bundled in our heavy coats and made a short run up river. At the first stop we found some bass.  One nice one and a couple of smaller ones. We released them after the fun of reeling a fighting smallmouth in heavy river current. This is just what the doctor ordered for spring fever!
 Each place we stopped at produced a few bass.
We were just getting ready to jump from one spot to another when a big fish smashed the lure I was fishing. “Fish on!” I shouted.
Line was peeling off my reel as the big fish caught current and raced down stream.
“Are you going to stop him?” Wayne asked, watching my line strip off the reel.
“I don’t think so… man, this is a big fish,” I replied.
 Wayne raced past me and started hauling in the anchor line. I moved to the back of the boat with line still burning off the reel.
Wayne fired up the engine and the chase was on.
We chased the fish down stream until it finally stopped its run in a deep hole. I was tugging as hard as I thought I could on the 8 pound test fishing line, but the fish just held close to the bottom.
“I’ll bet it’s a carp,” Wayne said watching the end of my pole for the tell tale throb.
 “It’s probably not a bass,” I commented back, “the tail motion is just too slow.”
The fish worked its way under the boat so Wayne started the outboard. As soon as that motor roared to life the fish took off like it had been shocked.
“Hey, what did you do?” I quipped to Wayne, “You scared the fish half to death. Look at it run.” Line was once again burning off my reel.
Of course, Wayne and Robert got a good laugh at me.
 I slowly worked the fish into sight and all three of us said at the same time, “Catfish!”
 It was a big channel catfish.
I grabbed my pliers and gently worked the hook out of its mouth and we all chuckled as the big fish slid out of sight into the river water.
 Robert needed to change line on one of his reels so Wayne and I beached the boat on a small gravel bar. We jumped out of the boat and began fishing at the top end of the bar.
Robert spooled up and tied on a thirty year old jig and grub from many, many years ago. He strolled to the lower end of the gravel bar and made a cast.
“Got one!” Robert shouted.
 “Wow, a big one!”
 I looked over in time to see a big small mouth bass jump on the end of his line.
 Wayne and I raced down the gravel bar to help Robert land the fish. After quite a fight, Wayne had a beautiful small mouth bass in his hands.
 “Wow, that is a great fish,” we both said while admiring the bass. Robert stood there grinning like crazy.
 “That’s probably the biggest small mouth I’ve caught,” he beamed.
We ended the evening’s fishing the same way we started it… tugging, pushing, and straining to get the boat back on the trailer.
We all agreed that we had experienced a very fun day on the water.
I must admit, those two farmers sure did some good fishing!
Robert headed off in the late evening to go set a head of water on his early spring crop.
 What a fun day fishing with farmers.