Birthday Outing

"Asher didn't get to paddle," Nathaniel remembered, just after we all stepped out of the canoe. "Come on, Asher," he continued, handing a paddle to his 6-year-old brother and turning back toward the beached boat. The leftover pizza we'd brought to the pond for dinner could wait a few more minutes.

Nathaniel held the canoe in place while Asher walked to the back and sat down in the "driver's seat," and then he pushed the boat off and took his place on the front seat, facing backward on the seat to he could better coach his brother.

Once quick lap around the pond with patient instruction from his brother was all it took to give Asher a great sense of accomplishment and a bigger thill than he gained from any of the six fish he had caught. I saw it as a gift from Nathaniel during Nathaniel's birthday outing.

For the second year in a row, we camped at some friends' property on Nathaniel's birthday, fishing that evening and the next morning as well. Asher joined the first part -- fishing, paddling and eating pizza -- before his mom came and picked him up. Then Nathaniel and I moved the boat to a beaver pond on the same property, where we fished till dark and then camped, with him in a backpack tent and me in the bed of the truck.

The weather was as pretty as the frogs' and crickets' songs, and the fish bit well. It was a great outing for all.

Shifting Seasons

With today's high forecast to approach 90, its sort of hard to believe that only a couple of months ago I was bundled in as many clothes as I could stand to wear, looking at white landscapes, walking (or riding) across the frozen tops of lakes and fishing through holes in the ice. Seasons shift with astounding speed. Soon summer will be fully in place, and it most likely will seem like it will never leave us; however, before we know it, the now-new leaves will be changing colors and falling from the trees. Before I fully settle into summer, I'm headed for Green Bay to catch some big smallmouths, and I'm expecting it to feel like spring. In fact, it's possible that it'll feel downrght winterish. And from where I sit this morning, that doesn't sound all bad!

Gaining a Grasp

Until I was recently asked about how to grab fish to unhook them, I hadn't really considered the fact that almost every popular freshwater species is different. Most bass fishermen know they can hold their favorite fish by the lower lip, but you'd better not try that with a bowfin or a chain pickerel. Bluegill are easy to grab around the body, as long as you know to slide your hand down the body - not up it - and to push down the spiny dorsal fin in order to spare getting pricked. Then there are channel cats and bullheads, with those three sharp fins that you need to avoid, and white bass and stripers with their sharp gill plates. Trout won't hurt you, but you can harm them, so it's best to handle a trout as little as possible if you plan to release it. The list could go on.

Fish handling is one of the many aspects of our sport that most folks learn by trial and error, by observation or from other anglers, as they go, but it's also one of those things that folks like me, who write fishing stories, could do a much better job of covering in articles.

Asher the Fish Catcher

Nathaniel, Asher and I just returned from a few days of camping and fishing, and 6-year-old Asher had the hot stick at every stop. He used breadballs to catch five bluegills from Lake Rutledge at Hard Labor Creek State Park, chicken livers to catch four catfish at Marben Farms Public Fishing Area and a mix of crickets and worms to land more bluegills than I could keep track of at Tennessee's Marrowbone Lake. My best guess would be that Asher caught about 25 bream in Tennessee - which was about the number than Nathaniel and I caught together. Asher also baited his own hook throughout the day yesterday and unhooked as many fish as he could.

Promised Nantahala Report

Just home from North Carolina's Nantahala River. Here's the promised report:

Some days trout want Road Runners dead drifted; other times, swimming the bait is the only way to go. This week the truth seemed to fall somewhere in-between, and it seemed like "the swing" was a critical part of many presentations. When my lure would get slightly downstream of me, if I would keep a loop in the line, stop reeling and lift the rod gently a few times, the result often would be a strike. Key areas to swing the bait, when possible, were the edges of current and slack water, preferably over boulders or broken ledges.

Trout -- especially brook trout -- did not seem as abundant to me as they normally do during May in the Nantahala. On a typical May day, you can't swim a bait through a small pocket along the edge of a big pool without either spooking a brookie or drawing a swipe. I didn't really see many of those pocket-guarding fish in two days of fishing, and the big pools didn't seem as full. Whether that was due to poaching, flooding, a shift in stocking or simply my observation skills, I'm not sure.

Either way, there were more than enough trout in the river for TJ and Ron Stallings, Nathaniel and me to enjoy two fabulously days of fishing, with plenty of catching action spread throughout the trip. Rainbows were the most abundant, by far, but we caught a handful of brookies and a single small brown trout to complete the slam. We caught most of our fish on Natural Science Trout and Panfish Series Road Runners.

Of course the river was beautiful as ever, and it felt great to be standing knee deep in the cool river.

Nantahala Report to Follow

Later this morning, Nathaniel and will head uphill to spend a couple of days waist deep in North Carolina's Nantahala with TJ & Ron Stallings of Road Runner lures, and prospects look great. By now, the river should have its full complement of spring-stocked fish (single-hook artificials and catch-and-release only for another few weeks), there should be a nice water flow, and the weather forecast looks perfect.

Nathaniel and I enjoyed a great trip to the Nantahala with TJ around this time last spring and got to do some early sampling of the Natural Science Trout & Panfish Series Road Runners, which are new in the marketplace this year. We caught quite a few trout, with all three species in the mix. Among them was a chunky brown trout that couldn't resist a Road Runner Original Marabou.

The 4 miles of delayed-harvest waters at the Nantahala offer a tremendous variety of water types, and a paralleling road makes it easy to hop in and out and sample everything from pockets to riffles to big plunge pools. Easy access and great fishing also attract a lot of fishermen, but it's easy to see where other anglers are already fishing.

This will be my first Nantahala trip of 2011, so I'm looking forward to stepping into the creek! Report to follow later this week.