A Nice Day To Play On The River

Memorial day was a perfect day to get out and enjoy the Kalamazoo River. Katy and I crawled out of bed bright and early (not really) and we were on the river by 12:30. The Big Curve bait shop was closed but luckily we had about 4 night crawlers that were donated to us by our neighbor Ted before we left. Katy started the day out with a sun fish which actually ended up being used for Catfish bait. After I put a chuck of that sunfish on Katy's hook, I tried bouncing a jig off the bottom of the river and happened to catch a 16" walleye. Following all that excitement, Katy felt what she described as a "nibble" and gave her rod a nice jerk and ended up setting the hook into good size snapping turtle. That's right, I said snapping turtle. At first she thought it was a snag and then a fish and then we were both surprised to see a big ugly turtle at the end of her line. Needless to say, I cut the line. We figured the turtles were hungrier than the fish in that spot so we pulled up the anchor and moved to a new location. It wasn't long and Katy had a fish on, at least we were hoping it was a fish this time. It turned out to be a nice size catfish. I talked Katy into holding it for a photo op, as you can see in the above picture. She looks like a natural, don't you think?

All in all, it was a beautiful day and we had a great time. Not to mention, we caught a variety of fish and more.