Working off Thanksgiving dinner

The holidays are under way so don’t put it off; get ahead of the game. Burn off that extra helping of dressing and repeated trips to the dessert buffet now. I hope you at least took a little walk between the main courses and dessert. Or maybe you burned off a few thousand calories shopping yesterday on black Friday. No matter how you do it get off your derrière while you still can! For damn sure don’t wait until after Christmas and New Years to make some half-hearted resolution to do something about the few extra pounds.

OK, so in my case it’s more than a few. So I took preemptive action on get-away-day and went kayak fishing on Wednesday right up until it was time to pull out for Granny’s. And I did actually take a good little walk between the huge plate of Thanksgiving dinner and the gluttonous dessert plate that came later. Then after returning home Friday afternoon, I bolted on down to the kayak shack, loaded one of the new Drifters into the truck, and went out to Salt Lake to see if I could tear up some fish.

I probably could have found an easier way to get a little exercise on Friday but the problem is that back on Wednesday I was tearing up the Spotted Seatrout when I had to pack up my gear and head back to the house to make it in time to leave for Thanksgiving. As soon as my bait would hit the water something would hit it. Every shrimp was catching a fish. All through Thanksgiving my mind was pre-occupied with getting back out to the spot and continuing where I left off. I dreamed of paddling the kayak across the choppy lake.

But that, of course, is not how it worked out. At all. Right off the bat it was too windy which can take most of the fun out of kayaking. There were some people fishing from shore with a kayak still on the truck. But I don’t even know if the wind caused the fish not to bite or not as I only fished for about fifteen minutes before prudence suggested I head back across the lake. I may be a bit crazy, but I’m not stupid.

From where I launched the boat I couldn’t see the radio tower that I use as a landmark to steer by. There was a light haze but I figured the tower would eventually come into view as I paddled a tack to take me due east towards my spot. When I finally got to the spot I still couldn’t see the tower, which concerned me a bit because I need navigation aids to get back across as well. As I was casting the dead shrimp that I had purchased “live” not an hour before from Bastrop Marina at Demi John, I am keeping an eye on the various landmarks to my west that are vanishing rapidly in the haze, or what I now had to consider was fog, considering how foggy it had been the previous morning.

Even as the idiot in me said, “Aw come on, just fish a little longer, you just got here, there’s still plenty of time to get back,” some other infrequently-heard-from voice said convincingly enough to rise over the cacophony, “Don’t be an idiot, paddle your ass back across the lake before you wind up paddling around out here by yourself in the dark foggy night. Moron.”

So, though much disappointed, we headed back. Empty handed except for a bucket full of dead shrimp.

It took about twice as long to get across both ways as it should have. On the way over it was due to high winds and also I missed the spot be a good margin and had to paddle along the shore line for a distance to find it. On the way back because the wind had shifted a bit more westerly and I was paddling almost directly into the wind.

The spot is about a mile and a quarter across the lake if you paddle in a straight line. Without a handy compass or other visual navigation aid paddling in a straight line on open water is near impossible. I had a compass, but it wasn’t handy. One of them emergency jobbers. But overall, it was great exercise and good practice with the Drifter in not so good paddling conditions.