Couple of weeks ago we tried putting in the duck boat to call coyotes on the river. It was SO cold ('bout -15 if I remember ) the grease in the out drive would not let the motor turn fast enough to start.
We took the boat home ,parked it and went in the truck. The boat was not touched, Today I went out and touched it off in a half a turn, runs fine.
In the Morn we will be back in the dark on the water trying to dodge what's left of the ice and calling coyotes.
The temp was a LOT warmer this try, all most above freezing!!!
31* calm actually quite nice, when we pushed off.
We waited for it to get light as we very seldom go on this part of the river. One time we did with the big boat and ended up working 4 hours digging our selves out of a BAD situation.
What we didn't remember was as many houses along side the river, We have to be at a minimum of a 1/4 mile away from an inhabited building to legally shoot. Fish you can fish right at there front doorstep. First spot Looked good ,set up looking up a drainage in to a nice pasture.
Called for the normal 20 minutes with out any movement . I swiggled around in the boat to sit up and looked across the river to see two coyotes trying to figure out what the heck was killing a baby fox. I got the scope on one and taking aim, as I did I could see a car on the interstate go by, Humm probably should not take a shot, bummer.
Couple of other dry sets and we find this tree in the river and from it we could watch BOTH sides of the river. And old homestead on one side and heave brush and cotton woods on the other, both had clear areas near the river that we could see a coyote.
Hit the call and a coyote stood up on my boys side must have been snoozing under the porch on the old fallen house. The 17 barked and the coyote laid back down HARD.
Cool one down...
This was also marked on the GPS it will make a perfect tie up with a hundred goose decoys for goosing this fall. the Numbers of geese and ducks, swan and even snow geese was very impressive even for this old goose guy.
Up the river we go past the "Sand bar" that caused us the problem in the big boat. As we picked our way through we put up a marker on the bank on both sides in the event we want to come back with the Jet we could avoid it.
We came to another perfect set and pushed the boat in to some cattails and started the call I was looking off the front ,south and the boy was pointing North out the back.
'Bout 12 minutes in a brown smudge moving fast in the brush. He busted out on to the sand with vengeance on his mind. Must have lost his mate to a fight and was not going to let it happen again I guess . Looked like a charging lion in my scope. I woofed to try to get him to stop no luck. the boy was watching and saw I could not stop him , he quickly hit a challenge aggressive howl on the shockwave. That stopped him, Bang flop number two.
You can see I hit quite low, I had the stock off the day before and it must be off a titch, going to have to do a little touch up on paper.
It was noon and 35 miles up better turn around if we wanted to fish any of the spots we saw on the way up.
Looking for walleye.
No luck just crappie trout. EVERY spot yielded trout YUK what a way to spoil a perfectly fine fishing trip.
The last spot we fished we had a small jet boat come almost to us and they turned around, Our boat only runs around 10 mph so the had to have a 20 minute run on us.
We get to the ramp and there still there strapping down the boat. We land, the boy get the Toyota and is waiting as they decide the ramp is a good place to grease the lower unit and wheels, WHAT??
I'm holding the boat and the boys waiting in the truck and one guy comes down and wants to talk... It was raining a bit and was looking like it could dump any second. He asked "get anything" I quickly said NO. Then he said " think we will miss the rain"
My opening I said yes if we ever get on the ramp!
He spun around on his heals and got in to the truck all in a huff.
GOOD
We loaded pulled along side covered the boat and left he was still dicking around "IN THE RAIN"
People!
We did find out we can go over 70 miles and still have 3 gallons of gas left, good to know.
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