A Kayak Fishing Adventure

I haven't been doing much fishing or hunting recently. And because of that, I haven't had much to write about. But I haven't, however, been sitting around idly. I've actually been planning quite the kayak fishing adventure, and it less than three weeks, I'll set off on my journey to start the new year.

I will be paddling the Everglades Wilderness Waterway in it's entirety and fishing it the whole way. Based off of the path I have planned, the entire thing should take me 8 days to paddle in my kayak and about 110 miles to complete. I will also be paddling this alone.

I've mapped out my path and each stop as shown above. Some camp sites are ground sites while others are chickees. If you don't know what a chickee is, it's pretty much just a raised platform above the water with a roof and no walls. These are placed out in the 10,000 islands because there's little to no solid ground in the endless mangrove maze.

The planning process is still underway. I've been making/going through checklists and trying to get all my ducks in a row. Where I'll launch, where I'll finish, who will pick me up, etc. These are all things I've been trying to sort out in addition to just gear. But I will have a chance while on this trip to do quite a bit of gear testing. I've got a stove, and several other pieces of equipment that I plan on putting through the wringer over the 8 day paddle.

I'm a little nervous and very excited about taking this trip. I've never done anything quite like this before, so not only will it be an experience of a lifetime, but also a huge learning experience. With any luck, I'll learn quite a bit about fishing in the backcountry, and maybe even land some fish in the process.

But overall, I'm really looking forward to this trip. I may post my plan, in detail, prior to leaving as well as my checklists for gear and what not. After I return, I'm sure I'll have some things to change up about my planning process and might come out of it with a good "how-to". Stay tuned!

Deer, Pigs, and Shame

The dull blue-grey of early dawn had already begun to illuminate the surrounding woods. But there would be no sunshine on this morning . A thick, wet fog was beginning to settle in and everything was soon soaked by its subtle misting. Though the day was truly beginning, the woods seemed suspended in a dark twilight under the shadow of the fog. It took longer than usual for the birds to start chirping and squirrels to begin chattering. It was a peaceful morning under the fog, and even the wildlife seemed reluctant to wake. That was, at least, until a long, terrifying growl echoed through the twilight…

The rumbling in my stomach hadn’t been going on for very long. In fact, it felt fine as I was busy attaching the climber to the base of the tree. But now, three quarters of the way up the tree, it hit me:

I think I have to poop

Situations like these are all mental games. Most of the time you can overcome the urge by just ignoring it or even telling yourself “You do not have to poop”. So I climbed on, inch-worming my way in my tree stand, all the while muttering to myself that I didn’t need to climb back down and take care of business. 

It wasn’t long after I’d settled into my stand before my gut rumbling shifted gears to full blown emergency. Reluctantly, I admitted defeat and with a great amount of frustration, I got ready to descend the tree to answer mother nature’s call. But I was quickly reminded that when mother nature calls me, she actually screams. And I hadn’t made it six feet down the tree before I realized what was about to take place. 

Oh no

There’s a real “Come to Jesus” moment that occurs when we, as adults, realize we’re about to crap our pants. It’s a humbling experience when you’re forced to make a snap decision based solely off of your inability to control your bodily functions. How you react in a moment of crisis defines who you are, and I had almost no time to think beyond the quick thought: “How does this even happen?”

 -----------------------------

 

Three days prior to this emergency, I found myself sitting in a Southwest Georgia hospital patiently awaiting my meeting with an orthopedic surgeon. I’d spent the entire night before in the emergency room for a very different emergency from the one happening up the tree. After nearly cutting off my index finger (a story that I won’t get into yet), the nurse who stitched me up flatly told me “Oh yeah, you’re gonna have to have surgery. You went right through the tendon and artery. I’ll schedule you an appointment with the surgeon”

So when the surgeon finally came in, I was fully expecting the worst news and that I would indeed need surgery. But in a bizarre twist of good luck, he looked at my finger, made me move it around some, and said “You’ll be fine without surgery. Here’s a prescription for some meds”. He then sent me on my way. 

I was on a hunting trip after deer on some of the plantations that I used to work on. I’d already missed my first morning hunt thanks to the finger fiasco, so I was excited to finally get some hunting done. This year I put away the bow for the time being. I darted deer enough. I was ready to blast one with the rifle, and I quickly set about doing just that. 

Just a few minutes before sunset later that evening, I lined the crosshairs of my 30-06 on a fat doe’s chest as she stood broadside, and squeezed the trigger. I was, however, shocked to see her kick, stumble, and run off. I was using the same 175 grain VLD bullet that took down my monster boar earlier this summer. It was almost expected for her to just fall over. So I climbed down and immediately found blood, but as soon as I did, the overwhelming smell of guts hit me. Looking down, I also saw half digested corn.

Oh no

I’d never gut shot a deer before. Ever. And I couldn’t believe I’d done it to this doe. My rifle was sighted in earlier that afternoon. So how had I shot so far back? And why was there SO much blood on the ground. Seriously, it looked like someone had dumped buckets of red paint on the ground.

Once my buddies showed up to pick me up, we began tracking her. Luckily, the blood trail was heavy, and we found her piled up about 100 yards from where she was shot. The entire time we were trailing her I was nervous and honestly kind of embarrassed to have gut shot a deer. When I shined my light down on her, it was obvious that the bullet exited the guts. But what about the entry wound? We flipped her over to discover a hole right in the shoulder. Exactly where I was aiming. 

So how did I manage to shoot a deer, perfectly broadside, in the shoulder and the exit wound come out mid rib cage? The only thing I can imagine is the bullet. The VLD is highly frangible and honestly not made for hunting. The bullet must’ve hit the shoulder blade, fragmented, and simultaneously ricocheted through the animal. Regardless, it got the job done, but I’ve stopped using VLD’s for deer hunting. Attempting to clean a gut shot deer one handed was enough to make me switch rounds. 

With meat in the freezer, I set about looking to shoot my first nice buck. Unfortunately, nothing aside from a spike and a little 6 point made an appearance the rest of the weekend. But my final day was anything but dull. 

Years prior to this day, me and my buddies had a long, drawn out conversation about peeing out of a tree stand. Some of us did it regularly, others (like myself), considered it a mortal sin. I know there’s tons of data explaining that deer can’t tell/don’t care, but it’s still a rule of mine. One of my friends, however, admitted that he’d had to poop from the stand before; a statement that we regularly ridiculed him about afterwards. I don’t know of a hunter who likes to poop in the same zip code as their tree stand, much less OUT of it. So we all gave him hell for years afterward about being the one guy we know who’s done it…

At least, until, my emergency 30 feet up a pine tree. I won’t go into detail as to how I managed to take care of business out of a climber. All that matters is that disaster was averted. I shamefully climbed the six feet back to the top, and sat down feeling extremely thankful that such a terrible outdoor experience was over. I’d made it 13 solid years of hunting without that ever happening, and I prayed that was the first and last time I’d ever have to do something like that again. 

Until 10 minutes later when round two kicked in…

Later that afternoon, I felt infinitely better and with a freshly restocked toilet paper supply in my bag, I deemed it safe to return to the tree stand. While walking down to a creek bottom with a lock-on stand, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see what looked like a small possum. Suddenly another one appeared. And another. I wanted a closer look so I walked within just a few yards of them. It was then that I realized what I was looking at. They weren’t possums. They were tiny little piglets. And that only meant one thing: Momma was nearby. 

It took me a second to figure out exactly what I was looking at. The stump that was only 4 yards from me suddenly moved and I realized momma pig was staring right at me. Now I’m still not entirely sure why she didn’t run, or charge, or anything. But I had time to take my rifle off of my shoulder, flip the scope covers off, turn the power from 9x to 3x, flip the safety, find the pig’s head, and pull the trigger without her moving. And as if that wasn’t enough, I heard a snort and looked to see a second sow just 10 yards away. Also not moving. I chambered a new round, found the pig’s head, and squeezed the trigger. Almost immediately I heard more snorting through the brush as a THIRD sow moved in close. This one, however, never stepped out, and just grunted at the piglets as they ran to her through the brush. 

I left the pigs on my path to grab them on the way out and went ahead to climb my stand. I was hunting over a scrape line and there was a nice looking scrape just 30 yards in front of my stand. The evening was pretty uneventful. I saw a bunch of turkeys, and a bobcat carrying a dead squirrel walked directly underneath my tree. It wasn’t until about 45 minutes before sunset that I saw brush moving just beyond the scrape. 

I raised my rifle and waited. The entire time I was envisioning what this buck was going to look like. Would this be it? My opportunity to –finally- kill a noteworthy buck? I’m generally very slow to excite, but I began to get a little excited with anticipation. 

All I need is for him to step out

But to my EXTREME disappointment, what stepped out was not a buck. Rather, a giant boar. Frustrated that my hunt was over without a buck, I flipped off the safety just as the boar stopped to sniff the air, and I put a round right behind the eye. The boar did a front flip, and as if to really prove to me that my chances of killing a buck were gone, he flopped down DIRECTLY on the scrape. 

As I was busy dragging bacon back to the road, I couldn’t help but reflect on the whole weekend. I was grateful to still have my finger, it was amazing getting to spend time with some of my best friends, and I was lucky enough to not only take a deer, but also pigs. It was my first and only chance to hunt this year, and with the exception of a few hiccups, the weekend couldn’t have been more fun. I got to spend some much needed time in the woods, and even did something out of the tree stand that I’ve never done before. 

That’s right. I’ve never actually shot a pig from a tree stand before. 

What? Did you think I was talking about a different tree stand experience? 

The question “what in God’s name did I eat?” actually did bother me for a while. And it wasn’t until a week later that I solved the mystery. Out of sheer boredom, I flipped over my prescription bottle to read the back. 

That explains a lot.

Tree Duty: An Inward Look

Every person should spend some time alone in nature. It’s remarkable how quickly you learn to appreciate things previously overlooked, and how everything’s suddenly put into perspective when you’re forced to face yourself with no distractions. 

I first picked up a bow and began hunting whitetail when I was twelve years old. I’m still not entirely sure why my dad decided to start me off bow hunting on Florida public land but I can only assume it was one of two things: 

1. To make me a better hunter. After all, killing a Florida public land deer with a bow is sort of like seeing a unicorn. Or…

2. To break my will to hunt at an early age in order to save my time, money, and mental health. 

I like to think it was the first reason. 

Fast forward thirteen years and I still find myself up a tree every fall. But I often ask myself “Why?”

Why do any of us, as people who love the outdoors, do the things we do? Why do we hike up mountains, paddle absurd distances, or sit in a tree all day? Different people must have different reasons. Perhaps it’s an excuse to just get out of the house, go exploring, continue a tradition, put some meat in the freezer, or even spend some time alone for self reflection. Whatever the reason may be, people continue to flock to the outdoors every day. And though I’ve ventured outside for almost every reason imaginable, I’ve lately noticed much of my time spent outside is in self reflection. So I’ve recently been having to ask myself “why?”

As a twelve year old, I can vividly remember bowhunting on Eglin Air Force Base over a game trail so ancient that the last living creature to walk it must’ve just recently sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea. What I can’t tell you, however, is what on earth I was thinking about. Was it video games? Dinner? Maybe it actually was just as simple as ‘I really hope a deer steps out’. I can certainly tell you that I wasn’t caught up thinking about jobs, finances, relationships, school work, etc. What was on my mind then, and what’s on my mind today are definitely different. And perhaps some of my reasoning for stepping outside today is different too. 

While darting deer out in the woods, we usually sat up in a tree stand, alone, in the dark, for about 6-8 hours. Every day. For months. We all took turns doing this to help keep our sanity, and it wasn’t long before we affectionately dubbed our turns as “tree duty”. Tree duty honestly wasn’t bad at first. We had a competition going where the person who darted the most does got a steak dinner. And it wasn’t so much the prize we were after as it was simply the bragging rights. So during the first few weeks, we practically fought over the chance to sit in the stand. But as the weeks went on, the willingness to sit in the stand began to die, and soon we were all just looking forward to –not- having to sit. 

During the first darting season, I probably got sick of sitting in the stand sooner than everyone else. I had just gone through a terrible break up and had suddenly found myself every other night sitting alone, up a tree, in the dark, and with no distractions. At the time, it was the last place in the world I wanted to be. I wanted to be around friends, family, anything. I just wanted to be doing something and get my mind off of my personal problems. I’d also recently graduated college and was finally having my “what am I going to do with my life now?” – freak out. But without even the ability to use a cell phone, I had no choice but to sit there and think about things. With no distractions, it’s easy to over think or over-analyze something.  To go over what-if’s, would’ves, could’ves, should’ves. Distractions like television, cell phones, friends, family, or social life are all great and extremely helpful to get your mind off of things. But when those things are taken away and you’re forced to face yourself, you learn to solve your problems. And quickly. For a while, I thought maybe I was just going crazy. It can’t be –that- hard to sit around in a tree at night, right?. After all, none of the other technicians had any complaints other than “it’s boring” or “I’m dying of blood loss from mosquitoes”. That was, at least, until this year. I knew one of my coworkers was going through some personal stuff and while riding around in the truck discussing tree duty, he turned to me and said “Dude, I don’t know how you did it last year”. 

Looking back, I’m –extremely- glad I was essentially forced to seriously think about my issues. I now feel as though spending time alone in nature, with no distractions, is something everyone should do. I’m not saying to go climb a tree in the dark for hours on end (unless of course you want to just drive yourself insane). But go on a hike alone. Go fishing, or kayaking, or mountain biking. Allow yourself to face your issues without distractions. Chances are you’ll solve your problems and by the end of it all, you cannot help but have a new found appreciation for almost everything in your life. Things that might otherwise be overlooked; those friends and family that are always there for you, the pleasant waitress at the restaurant, or the funny sitcom on TV. I have a true appreciation for those things because I know, at one point, I would’ve killed to have them around as a distraction. 

All of this is, however, only one way of looking at getting outdoors. I realized this as begin packing for an upcoming hunting trip. Though I’m excited, I thought of sitting in a tree stand and this bizarre, involuntary shudder ran through me. Why am I going to do this again? 

The answer comes from the other side of the spectrum. There are those of us who turn to the outdoors as a way to “get away from it all”. The outdoors acts as an escape from the busyness and responsibility of every day life. It’s a chance to rewind, relax, and –not- think about things. What’s odd is that I’m now trying to distance myself from those distractions I once prayed for. Internet, bars, television , restaurants, etc. Maybe there really can be too much of a good thing, but I find myself now looking forward to sitting in the stand rather than dreading it. 

Perhaps the outdoors serves as the best of both worlds. Time alone in nature can serve not only as a means of self reflection, but also a distraction in itself. It can help solve your problems, or help you take a step back from them. It all depends on your current perspective. What I do know is that no one has ever spent some time alone in the outdoors and come back a worse person. Whatever your preferred outdoor activity is, it can only help make you a better person. All you have to do is step outside. 

Darting Deer and Calling Coyotes

"But something caught my eye. A small white dot that wasn’t there earlier was moving toward us. It continued to get closer and I soon realized what it was.

“Yote…Yote. Get ready”, I whispered to the guys that were with me. It was sprinting directly at us from about 400 yards away. I watched as it got closer. 300 yards, 250, 200, 150. And the moment it hit 100 yards, our spotlight shined it."

This is just a snippet of a short story I recently wrote for Legendary Whitetails. The whole article can be found here: http://community.deergear.com/Article/DartingDeer

If you're an avid hunter like me, be sure to head over there and check out their pages/merchandise. It's definitely worth a look!

If you've noticed that my writing has slowed a little bit, it's because I'm in the process of planning some pretty big things. The whole "figuring out my career" thing also takes a bit of my time up. But stay tuned! Big things on the way.

The Offshore Drag

There’s something refreshing about running offshore to fish. Maybe it’s the change of scenery, species, or even the tackle. But it’s something that I love to do. 

Unfortunately, I’m poor. Most of my fishing consists of inshore fishing not because it’s ALL I like to do, or I’m some inshore purist. Alas, it’s merely because running offshore is so freaking expensive and I can't afford it all the time. Gas, chum, bait, etc. It all adds up and before you know it, you’ve had to take out a loan with the bank to cover your fishing trip. 

It’d been well over a year since I had a chance to venture offshore. And it –just- so happened that during the week I ran home to visit family, the Red Snapper season had been re-opened. After getting hold of my brother, I convinced him that taking his boat offshore would be an awesome brotherly thing to do, and before I knew it, we were on our way out of Pensacola pass in route to slay the snapper. 

Our first stop was to pick up some live bait. It was here that we discovered the live well wasn’t working. Rather than simply not have any live bait, we opted to fill the live well the old fashioned way and I quickly found myself leaning over the gunnel with a five gallon bucket to fill the well.

After a short trip out to the wreck, we anchored up surprisingly well (it never goes smoothly) and started fishing. This is where I often note the subtle differences between offshore fishing and other types of fishing. Rather than throwing out an elaborately designed fly, or an artificial that perfectly mimics a small shrimp, I was looking down at an entire cigar minnow which was hooked brutally through the eyes. There was a giant bag of chum hanging off the back of the boat, and with the rough seas, every step was more of a controlled stagger. These are things you miss while wade fishing inshore, or trout fishing in a stream. 

It only took a few seconds after my first drop to feel a bump. I quickly reeled up, and was immediately doubled back over. Pinned to the gunnel, I watched as my line slipped away almost instantly, and before I knew it “Snap”. I was cut off on the wreck. There was nothing I could have done to stop the fish. I checked my reel and confirmed that I absolutely could not tighten my drag any tighter, and upon reeling up what was left of my rig, I noted that my 80# leader had been easily broken off. Whatever was down there was big. 

After rerigging, I dropped back down and it wasn’t long before we started putting fish in the boat. With the limit being only two red snapper per person, it took no time for my brother and I to limit out. 

In addition to four Reds, my brother also caught a Mingo and a Black snapper. At one point, I felt a small nibble and reeled up my rig to discover I had a small ruby red lips on my line. But rather than unhooking him and tossing him back into the drink, I opted to lower him on my line about half way to the bottom. And sure enough, it took only a minute before my rod was doubled over, and the fight was on. 

Behold the world’s luckiest Amberjack. Measuring in at 29.5 inches, he was exactly one half inch too short to keep. Reluctantly, I had to throw him back, and in the course of only a few seconds, watched this fish transform from the luckiest to the unluckiest fish in the world. There was a sudden flash, a cloud of red, and then half of an Amberjack floated up to the surface. Barracuda at their finest. It’s actually infuriating to see this. Rather than us get to keep the Amberjack, I let it go (to live) only to watch it get fed to a barracuda. 

With our Red Snapper limit reached, we decided it was time to see what we could get in the chum slick behind the boat. We began cutting up small pieces of frozen bait, and in combination with shaking the chum back, it wasn’t long before we were seeing fish under the boat. They –looked- like big Red and Black snapper. The problem was that we couldn’t catch them. Using a small hook and fluorocarbon leader, we fly-lined small pieces of bait into the chum line, watched the fish pick it up, and then proceed to never stop them. Straight down to the wreck, drag screaming, the fish just couldn’t be stopped before cutting us off on the wreck below. This happened several times, even with the heavy tackle we were using. It was almost like our drag just didn’t exist. 

Unfortunately, we were unable to solve the mystery as to what was kicking our butts behind the boat. A look at the clock told us it was time to go as my brother had a work meeting that he needed to get back to. Just before cranking the motors, however, he happened to look down in the water and see some monofilament floating near the props. We climbed over the gunnels and began pulling on it to discover it was completely wrapped around the port motor’s prop. 

 

Great. 

Taking everything even remotely valuable off of my body, we raised the motors and I climbed out onto the foot of one and began unwrapping line. It wasn’t our line, just someone’s that had been left floating around near the wreck. After quite a bit of unwrapping, I discovered that it wasn’t just mono. It had wire leader attached to it as well. I was sure I was never going to get it all unwrapped, but as I sat there on the starboard motor’s foot, leaned over in 4 foot swells while trying to cut away mono from the adjacent prop, I noticed it started coming loose. To both mine and my brother’s shock, it suddenly all came right out. Disaster averted. Getting back INTO the boat proved to be much more difficult than getting out of the boat, but I somehow managed to do it without killing myself. And after a minor issue that involved us losing the anchor, we left the wreck on our way back to dock with a cooler full of fish. 

Overall the trip was awesome. I very rarely get to run offshore so I was overly thankful that I had the opportunity to do so. I really do enjoy everything about it. Big fish, big bait, big tackle, big boats, big water. It’s a unique way of fishing and something I wish I could do more of. Hopefully I can make it out again soon. And maybe next time we can stop those fish.

Wandering at Home

Last week I was lucky enough to get to run back home to visit family. It'd been a little while, the middle of July in fact, since I'd gotten to go home, and I was extremely excited to get out on the water.

So after taking care of some family business, I loaded up the truck, hitched the Gheenoe, and picked up a buddy to go inshore fish. We launched at an area where I usually catch fish, and took off across the grassflats in search of trout and reds.

The wind was, of course, blowing. But thanks to the Gheenoe having a trolling motor, it didn't affect us nearly as bad as it would have had we been in kayaks. I love to paddle, but Lord is a motor nice sometimes.

I quickly discovered that the topwater lure I was using wasn't going to work. Every cast brought back about 20 lbs of sea grass that was floating on the surface, most of which was assuredly from prop chop. I'm not really one to get on my soapbox about issues (the main problem being that I can't be taken seriously...well...ever), but this really irks me. Only stupid people run their engines trimmed all the way down over grass flats, and I have zero tolerance for stupid people. Seriously. Just trim up and slow down. It's not that hard.

Realizing that I'd be pulling grass off of my lure after every cast, I opted to run across the sound. The wind was coming out of the south, so it made sense to me that going the direction the wind was coming from would result in less floating grass. And for once, I was right. The south side of the sound had almost no floating grass. The issue here, was that I'd literally never fished this area. I spent 20+ years in Pensacola, and yet there are still plenty of places I've never even attempted to fish. And this was one of them. But as luck would have it, we almost immediately began spotting fish.

Redfish, mixed with mullet, began showing up along the broken sandy bottom and it wasn't long before we had our first hook up. The screaming drag immediately told me that it wasn't some trout that I'd hooked.

After a few more misses, we took off again to a different area; another place I'd never fished before. We scouted some promising looking spots, and it wasn't until we were just about to give up that my buddy hooked into a fish.

The two Reds in the boat were near identical. Both right at 25 inches. Just before dark, I landed one little Speck on topwater, and the setting sun told us it was time to leave.

Aside from actually catching fish for a change, I really enjoyed myself on this particular trip. I'm not a huge fan of having "go-to" spots. Areas where I -know- I'm going to catch fish. I really like to explore. To learn new areas, and try different things. I feel like if you aren't willing to switch your game up, you're never going to improve as a fisherman. So striking out and having this new area produce fish simply tickled me pink. I can't wait to get back and explore a bit more, hopefully landing some fish in the process.