Whelp, I think I have found my newest favorite kayak fishing spot. I headed North after putting in and after a few hundred feet I encountered several guys in john boats catching sandies with just about every cast. They were using minnows on a bobber and out of the 10 fish I saw them catch in about five minutes, 3 of them looked to be keepers. The john boats were gone when I left later that afternoon, but I'm sure they all got their limit.
I really wanted to see an alligator, but I had to settle for lots of turtles and one very cool looking owl.
Most of the turtles jumped into the water as I approached, but there were two that refused to budge, even when I was close enough to reach out and pick them up. They were both in the same spot on the way up and back down. Alpha turtles ain't afraid of no kayak!
The remains of an alligator meal, perhaps? I believe this was a deer skeleton. It was way to big to be a dog, but too small to be anything else. RIP Bambi.
Here is the old "abandoned" bait shop/fishing village/boat rental place (depending on who you ask). I counted 6 sunken boats littering the shoreline. I did notice that one of the buildings had all new glass windows, and a satellite dish on top, so someone is probably living there. There's also a camper parked on the side that looks habitable.
I found several abandoned boats on the river. Does anyone know what's up with these? Could someone take and repair these boats or are they just part of the river now?
I paddled all the way up to the Eagle Mountain Lake dam and only had to get out and drag the kayak once because it was too shallow. The water was barely trickling out of the spillway, but someone I spoke to fishing the bank nearby told me that when they are letting out a lot of water, you can literally see the fish spilling out.
There were probably about a dozen different folks fishing from shore along the river, and they were either catching their limit in sandies or not catching at all. I did not catch a single fish the entire day until I paddled back my car and decided to throw three last casts in the spot where I saw all the john boats this morning. I got good bites on the first two casts and on the third I hooked and landed this fella. Too bad it was 4:40 at this point and I had 20 minutes to load my kayak and get out of the park!
Only 1 fish with about 6 hours on the water, but I got to talk to lots of people and the general consensus is that white bass are on right now and the crappie are not. I'm going back tomorrow and am going to just focus on the sandies and see how much damage I can do. People were catching them on minnows and white grubs. I caught this one on a 3 inch shad on a jig looking thing that I found on a log right before using it. Good bites all three times I cast it out, but it's a 3 inch plastic on a good sized jig head, so only this beast got hooked.
