Sunday, May 12th, 2013

Right now I'm feeling pretty exhausted after a long weekend fishing and camping up at Yellow River.  I took Friday off from work, and I drove up with Matt Seago early Friday morning to start off our trip.  There we met up with Jon & Jeremy Seago, their dad, and Tyler.  This year we didn't seem to concentrate so much on fishing as we normally do.  Of course we did catch our share of fish, but we also played bocce ball, made s'mores, played hacky sack, and spent a lot of time sitting around the camp fire.  For the most part the weather cooperated with us, unlike some years :)  Both nights did get pretty cold (this morning when I got up there was frost on the ground and on the cars), and the wind was bad at times, but mostly we were dry.  Saturday morning when I awoke I found that the wind overnight did make quite a mess of our camp.  One canopy of Matt's was destroyed, the trash bag was blown over causing it to blow all over, and our lawn chairs and other items were scattered around.  That was fun to clean up. 

As for fishing, Friday we focused on the fishing hole right beside camp.  The first fish that I caught I decided to eat it ASAP just to have the freshest trout I could.  So after I reeled it in I cleaned it, took it to camp and seasoned it, wrapped it in aluminum foil, and cooked it over the camp fire.  Really fresh trout is hard to beat.  Later that day I went back to the same hole and caught 3 more fish (two I threw back because they were smaller).  Then that evening I walked with Tyler to a different fishing hole back in the woods.  We had a few bites, but had trouble setting the hook well and getting them to shore.  After an hour and a half, I managed to catch one fish that we kept.  So my fishing total for Friday was 5 fish, 3 keepers. 

On Saturday, Jon, Jeremy, and myself went fishing for probably 45 minutes total, just at the hole next to camp.  Each of us caught 2 nice keepers in that time.  It was nice when they were actually biting at a steady pace.  I'm sure we could have gotten our limit of 5 per day each if we had stayed, but we decided to stop fishing and clean what we had.  We fried up some fish fillets, and also made some homemade onion rings which were delicious.  That night we also grilled steaks that their dad had brought up.  Overall I would say that we ate plenty of good food during the trip.  This morning I got up and cooked breakfast (bacon and scrambled eggs) over the fire pit. 

Here was the first trout (a rainbow trout) that I caught and immediately cleaned & cooked.

The fishing hole next to our campsite.  If you look close you can almost see the fish in the water.  In person it was actually easy to see where the trout were as we were fishing.

Matt, Jeremy, and Tyler at the campsite.

Here I am with our stringer of 6 fish on Saturday.