Its official. I’m too freggin’ old to sleep on the floor of a boat. Its Monday and I only had to sleep on the floor one night, but it was too much. But I can still feel that one night as I type right now.
Friday
It was unbelievably cold all weekend, the 60’s, in July? Its unheard of! We got down to the Queen dock at the Marina around 6:30pm. The cabin cruiser we stayed on, ‘the TimTation’ is owned by my friend’s uncle, who was spending the weekend working on his new dry docked houseboat. Its over 60 feet long and has been completely gutted and is in the process of being entirely redone. After checking out the boat and drinking a few beers we went ahead and went back to the dock to night fish. We fished until we ran out of worms. I caught several bluegill and 6 catfish. None of my catfish were more than 1.5 lbs. My friend hooked into the biggest carp I have seen in a while. It must’ve been 20-30 lbs. Its head was as big as mine! He tried to reel it in a little too quickly and it snapped his line after it broke the surface. He did pull in a4-5 lber. He held the pole and I got belly down on the dock and grabbed it by its lip to put it out. We drank about 3 bottles of wine between both of us and our new friend Norm, before passing out in the Cruiser.
Saturday
Saturday morning my friend and I woke up around 8 AM, went to grab some breakfast and then headed back to the lake. Apparently his uncle needed some help removing a generator from the new houseboat. They had the bright idea to have my friend and I stand on top of a cube truck with ropes to ’stabilize’ it, while they lifted it over the side of the boat. Realizing this was a recipe for disaster they opted to instead just cut away part of the railing and use some rollers to get the generator to the truck.
After avoiding that disaster I went back to the docks to fish some more. I caught another catfish and a few bluegills before getting called back up to the dock because they were about to launch the boat. I had tried to use some cranks and spinners but the water was fairly murky and I didn’t have any luck.
The boat launch gave me a chance to start drinking. I had a few beers while they slipped it into the water. It only had bubbles coming up from one place, but we think that place was actually the tires. There was a leak however, from where my friend’s Uncle drilled screws through the bottom of the boat! Eventually they pulled it back out, grinded off the screws and patched it with some boat epoxy and told us it was about time to go boating.
While we were watching them put the boat in the water I saw 2 guys cleaning fish at the courtesy station. That had caught a lot of catfish. They had 2-3 in the 5lb range and a bunch of 2lbers. They said they were fishing up near honey creek.
While we waited for them to show up back at the docks to go boating we had a little contest to see who could catch more bluegill. We probably caught around 60-70 in about an hour while waiting. We could catch them at will on that dock. We went out boating and drinking for several hours on the cruiser. Everyone got extremely drunk, once I hit land again I tried fishing again but the wine would let me have none of it. I almost passed out with my hand on the line, laying on my back on the dock, but my friend grabbed me and put me on the floor of the boat.
Some of the Catfish from the first night
Sunday
We woke up around 9am and just lazed around. I found an extremely comfy lawn chair and sat in there with my line in the water for about an hour before catching the biggest catfish of the weekend. It was still less than 2 lbs so don’t get excited, but it was fun to catch.
Around noon we packed up our stuff and headed back to Des Moines after saying thanks and goodbye to our hosts.
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