When you've only been in the water for a few minutes. And you make two casts toward a shore that's been basking in the sun. And in those two casts you catch two fish in less than a foot of water. You think that in the next half mile of virtually identical shore that you are going to have one hell of a day of fishing.

Then, two hours later when you are just about at the ending point you catch your third fish of the day. You realize that the fishing gods just played you for a fool. I did catch a fourth fish, a carp that thought it was a smallie. Hit like one. Put up a better fight really. Too bad they don't do that more often.

Luckily it was a beautiful day. A little windy even behind the islands. Made casting a little difficult. So I just wandered around looking for things to look at.

A couple of months ago I came across these chairs stacked on top of each other and wrapped around a tree. I'm assuming one of the floods took them out of someone's yard and dropped them all the way down here for me. So I set them up in an out of the way place and stop here every time I fish through.



The light was pretty intense and as it was setting it was doing a pretty good job of lighting up the trees. It's very difficult to get the luminous look that I like to think I see. Something about taking the picture, maybe it's something in the lens, always flattens out the colors. You can bring some of it back, but it's not quite the same. When I used to shoot a lot of film I learned to compensate for this. Stop down the lens to about f64, put the camera on a tripod and play with long exposures. Can't do this with a point and shoot. Next camera investment will be a digital SLR. Hopefully it will behave more like a film camera. So I just go around shooting things and hoping for the best.











I was trying to get the color of the trees on the other side of the river into the shots. Didn't quite work, but you don't know till you try.

The private duck blind on the tip of the island across from the canoe launch is all set for the season. They did a pretty good job on the camo and it blends in pretty well with the rest of the island. It's probably the best I've ever seen it. Did get to see a few geese taken from this spot during the early goose season, but normally this isn't all that great of a spot. If you go a few hundred yards upstream, that's where all the geese hang out. I don't think guys realize they should walk on shore up above the geese, drop into the water and hike back down the river. I've been told this isn't illegal. If you happen to be carrying a fishing pole, so much the better. If you're going to walk down the middle of a river, you may as well cast around. The carp don't seem to mind the colder water.





There were a lot of leaves in the water for this trip. From the river bottom to the top of the water column, every other cast seemed to require the removal of leaves. Came across this one under a couple of inches of water, except for a few of it's tips just breaking the surface of the water. The color was intense against the dark of the river bottom.



I really should just quit fishing and go wandering around the river. Definitely would make it easier on me. Less crap to carry around. I've had a few comments from photographers wanting to know how I get my shots. Simple, you walk the shore, I walk down the river. Just a different perspective. I don't pretend for a second that they're any good. But I like most of them.