Well I just got back from a fun fishing trip with Seago, Tyler, and Seago's brother Matt at the Yellow River State Forest in Northeast Iowa. We stayed at the Little Paint campground at site #135. We all drove up on Friday. I could only stay the weekend, but everyone else will stay up there a few more days to fish and turkey hunt.
After we arrived Friday afternoon we put up the tent and organized the campsite. Then we drove to Harper's Ferry to get our fishing licenses. Seago and Tyler continued on to Prarie Du Chien, Wisconsin to buy groceries and supplies. Matt and I went back to the campsite and started fishing at the hole right by our campsite. Matt ended up catching 3 trout (but one of them he threw back because it was small), and I caught 2 trout. I believe that one of his was a brook trout while the others were all rainbow trout. Seago and Tyler did not fish once they got back, and we really didn't fish for long on Friday because of the weather. A DNR officer came over to warn us of possible thunderstorms and even hail that were approaching. We didn't get any hail, but it did rain really hard that night. I'm not sure how much it rained, but I'm guessing at least an inch. That's not nearly the worst weather I've had up there, but that's another story all together. It did suck though that we really couldn't sit around a nice fire that night... we basically ended up huddling under a small canopy to stay dry.
Saturday was much better weather on our trip. We slept in and played a little bocce ball after we made breakfast (bacon and hard boiled eggs). Then we drove over to another fishing site at Wexford (close to a Church and cemetary). We probably spent 2 and a half hours fishing. Tyler caught 2 fish, and Seago, myself, and Matt each caught 1 fish. They were all rainbow trout except for one brook trout. We were using either kernels of corn or small pieces of night crawlers. After fishing we came back to the Little Paint campsite to cook up our yummy trout. By then there were a bunch of boy scouts that had set up close to us... and they were really annoying. Tons of kids everywhere, and they were being loud fishing right by our camp at our favorite fishing hole. Oh well. We cut up some lemons and stuffed each trout with lemon, butter, and lemon pepper seasoning. We wrapped these in tin foil and cooked them over the camp fire. Delicious! It's hard to beat fresh trout. After a while all of the kids stopped fishing by us, and after an hour I tried to fish there some more. I caught 1 rainbow trout (for a total of 4 fish that I caught on the trip). Also on Saturday Jeremy Seago and their dad came up to meet us. We helped them set up camp and then made a nice campfire and had a few beverages as we sat around the fire.
I awoke Sunday morning to even more rain... and that took up most of possible fishing time with rain. Rain, rain, rain. It did let up for a little while, and we tried our hand at some fishing right by our campsite for 30 minues. No luck.
In all I had a fun weekend fishing and camping, but it is very nice to be inside and warm and sheltered from rain. Good luck to the guys as they are still up there. Hopefully they will catch a lot more trout and maybe even bag a turkey.
