4/17/16 It Never is Quite How You Imagined It

Sunday was another absolutely beautiful day. Even better, was that Kelly also had the day off. After getting some working done around the house, Kelly agreed to come with me and fish a Northern Indiana river for Pike. While loading the truck up Kelly just happened to mention that I should grab the first aid kit. It's always a good idea to have one when fishing for Pike just in case you happen to get cut by their teeth like I managed to do two years ago. The decision to take the first aid kit would be a good one for an entirely different reason. The drive up North was pleasant and the weather was amazing! I can't believe how much of a difference a week came make sometimes! We arrived at the river about 1:30 in the afternoon and began unloading the canoe. In the blink of an eye I had a freak accident. While walking down the boat ramp, a stick jammed into the top of my shoe. Not sure how it happened but it happened. Anyways, I picked that foot up to shake it loose. What I didn't realize is that my other foot was standing on mud. I immediately slid and fell. I had my two rods in my hand and in an attempt to not damage the rods or reels I ended up hitting my knee HARD onto the concrete ramp. It quickly started gushing blood. It must have been weird to Kelly to all of a sudden look up and see me sitting on the ramp clutching my knee. We luckily had the first aid kit and we were able to clean out the gashes and apply band aids to get the bleeding mostly stopped. This incident could have ended a trip before it even got started. It is becoming pretty clear to me how important it can be to have first aid kit with some basic supplies when going on even short trips. Not long after we were on the water, the fishing started to pick up. I got two small Pike within just a few casts of each other. After that the action was fairly consistent for the next few hours. Kelly had about a dozen strikes and follows but never did end up catching any fish. She seemed very frustrated and I wasn't sure what else to tell her. She was doing everything right but was just unlucky when it came to actually hooking up. At least the action kept her interested throughout the day. I did end up catching 5 Pike which is a pretty decent day in anyone's book. They were all relatively small with the largest fish being approximately 20 inches in length. I know there are much bigger fish in this stretch. The numbers of fish we saw was pretty encouraging though. We caught all of our fish on Rapala X-Raps and large two-blade spinner baits. It was a fun day. I just wish Kelly had gotten to catch at least a few of the fish that she had chances at catching.