Saturday, July 13, 2013

Kayaking the Lamine River, near Blackwater, MO: Deep steep shores and tons of rough fish!

The Lamine River just west of Columbia, MO is a river that one crosses on the way from St. Louis to Kansas City.  I have been eyeballing this river for years and years, and I finally had an opportunity to spend a couple of hours on it last week.
The water quality, in my opinion, is fairly poor.  It is very common of rivers in the northern part of Missouri- true mud bottoms, slow flow, and due to the proximity to flowing into the Missouri River, chock full of rough fish.  I do not think I have ever seen that many gar in one body of water- they literally were swimming around like sharks!  There were parts of the river that had a green algae like film, which are typical of bodies of water that have an issue with farm run off chemicals, etc.
I ended up kayaking about 4 miles total.  Heading up stream to one of the bridges (fishing for bass the whole way) and then turning around and coming back.  I also went down river just a bit to see the confluence point of the Blackwater River.   One of the more interesting highlights was about a 5 pound Asian carp literally jumped from one side of my kayak to the other side of the kayak.
This is a river I will probably not come back to fish (although it probably has some very large catfish in it), however it would be a great river to get the touring kayak out and go for some miles in the winter- very few people appear to use this river- probably due to the way the river lays out and possibly the water quality.

"Life is better on a kayak"

Mike

 

 click HERE for a water trail map of this adventure

 


Thursday, July 11, 2013

Kayaking Estero Bay, near Lovers Key SP Florida and Whiskey Creek, Ft Myers, Florida

Great day of kayaking and fishing in Estero Bay, Florida over the 4th of July week, 2013.  The weather was incredible in regards to the amount of rain and sudden storms, but we got a nice opportunity to get out and get a little kayaking and kayak fishing in.  I have to admit I am not the best saltwater/brackish water fisherman, but I gave it a great try.  We are considering coming back in December to give it another try.  Lovers Key SP is one of the most beautiful places in the world.  We did get an opportunity to surf fish the Gulf side the next day, with similar results in regards to fishing.

Later in the week, we got a chance to kayak Whiskey Creek in the Ft. Myers area.  It is a residential area but the kayaking was enjoyable, and I managed to catch a small catfish right by where the creek enters the river.