Ok so on Tuesday, we tried paddlefishing again. This time we decided to go out to a place call the confluence. Its where the Missouri River and the Yellowstone River meet. Its a rather big deal because these two rivers are pretty good sized. The confluence is like the “mecha” of paddlefishing. They have the weigh station there and the cleaning house and all that fun stuff. There are a TON of people there on opening weekend, and really any weekend, camping and trying their luck at fishing. But this was a Tuesday, so there were not that many people fishing so we decided to go try there. We left around 6 or so, because of school and stuff it took awhile to get out there. When we left it was 61 degrees and sunny, Excellent weather. 20 minutes later, when we arrived at the confluence, it was drizzly and cloudy. By the time we left for the day it had dropped to 48… awesome. Anyways we gave it out best shot. When we arrived someone had just hooked into one and we watched as they landed it a ways down shore from where he hooked it. You see you don’t really real in paddlefish, you more or less hold them till the current of the river pulls them close to shore and they you gaff them. He ended up pulling in around a 50-60 lb fish. Its hard to say for sure, I have not held to many of them and the are just really fat and hard to gauge, but he seemed to be around there. Never the less, he was an awesome fish and really got us excited. So we walked down the shore a ways till we found a place to fish, and began the work. Our bodies were none to pleased to be doing the motion again but after about 50th cast they stopped complaining. We found out there are a lot of snags at the confluence, twas most annoying. Everest is getting quite good at ties the paddlefish rig lol. But after another 2.5 hours of casting and talking with others fishing, we ended up with nothing to show for our efforts. Hopefully our luck will change soon! I will try and post some pictures next time of us fishing.
James