Pit stop on the road to the Soo

After saying our goodbyes to the kids at Wisconsin Dells Paul and I were again on the road in search of adventure, fun and a few fish. It was only a couple of hours to our destination but we required a lengthy stop to try and determine the cause of some faulty trailer lights. Still, it wasn't a big problem. We did have one memorable moment though. We were arriving at a four way stop and rolled to a stop (and yes, it was a complete stop in case you're wondering). To my right was a group of three or four guys out riding their harleys all dressed in their leather chaps and bandanas. These weren't the serious biker type but more the try-hards with a few too many dollars and desperately trying to fight off midlife, dorkiness, balding, erectile dysfunction, failure to attract a sexual partner, or some combination of those things. Even if my description is lacking, I'm sure you all know the type (and if you are one of them and reading this - piss off I don't like you!).

Anyway, I'm not quite sure exactly what was their thinking but I was at a complete stop, had waited for someone crossing the intersection from my left and oncoming, and now entered the intersection. These guys were still slowly motoring up to the stop sign. For whatever reason as I passed through and (and I think this is quite telling of the degree of manhood these guys had) had cleared the intersection one of them yelled and gestured towards me " you asshole" at the top of his lungs in whiniest American accent. I looked at Paul and neither of us could figure out what he was so upset about but I went to pull over and get him to either put up or shut up because I'm not willing to take shit from some pathetic, middle aged loser that thinks he's more than he is just because he's on a bike that sometimes are ridden by guys with balls. Paul took a more comical view of things and urged me to keep driving and we began joking about the situation. Although I must say, I kept secretly hoping I'd see those guys cruising past one of the country roads we were on, especially when we were pulled over dealing with the trailer light problem.

But as usually happens with such things the event faded as we joked around and flirted with girls in the gas stations (using our heaviest accents and australianisms) and deliberated over the important things in life, such as which chocolate bars were the greatest ones in the world and whether or not one type of cheese had a greater capacity to generate gas when eaten than another type, or if perhaps genetics played some role in the extent to which various cheeses could predispose one to gaseous buildup. Despite some serious time spent on the subject we never did shed light to the answer on this most perplexing problem. Perhaps we had spent too long in the truck together? Paul and I never were ones to spend too much time trying to solve the world's problems or get too nosey about the many complications in one another's lives.

Considering the conversation topics it was probably good that we good to the Manitowoc River late in the afternoon. There weren't many people about and we didn't have much light left in the day so we rigged up quickly and headed down to hit the stream. The water level was ghastly low and warm and there weren't many fish about. We had to walk quite a way downstream to even find a few fish. When we did spot some fish Paul got into position and began trying to seduce an American Chinook salmon. It didn't take long before he was hooked up to a small buck. I netted it for him, we took a couple of pictures and fished a little while longer. The few fish we found were stale and spooky and highly stressed from the high water temperatures. With the fading light it wasn't hard to convince Paul to head back to the truck.

Heading downstream looking for good waterThe water was low but colors were OKPaul's first American Salmon

I moved the truck up to another part of the park so we could access some new water in the morning before we munched down on some canned food (I can't remember exactly what it was) and lasagne. After a couple of days with the kids at the waterpark we both collapsed into heavy sleep. We were woken up at 2am by a loud thumping on the truck. I was ready to get out and kill the someone shining their torch into my truck but that mood changed when the topper opened and I saw the cop and his badge. He wasn't happy that we'd disobeyed the "no camping" sign and didn't buy our excuse that because we didn't have a tent we weren't really camping. He became less serious when he'd checked our stuff and found we didn't have any fish on us and weren't out netting or otherwise poaching fish but was still a little pumped up on badge power for my liking. Still, he gave us the option of driving away or staying and sleeping. However we could only stay is he wrote us up a ticket for a couple hundred dollars. That sounded fair and we opted to get out of there. The river was in crap shape anyway.

We were still tired and I knew once the adrenalin left we'd again be sleepy so I opted to park the truck behind a 24 hour gas station just a few minutes up the road, right by the Branch River. We slept until the sun had cleared the horizon before casually making our way down to the river. From the path along the river there had been a lot of foot traffic over the weekend and the way the fish were acting they had been "fished" over a lot. This was prime gavel-raping water but we did find a few spooky fish to cast to but they were spooky. One fish shot off into the shallows and Paul caught it with his bare hands. So yes, it seems Paul is very good with his hands!

A hand caught king salmon

As we came to some prime gravel we found a local fella there with his gravel-raping gear set up with a heavy sinker followed by a stout treble hook. No doubt these fish had seen a lot of that over the lat couple of days. I was pretty pleased when Paul mentioned he'd had enough of fishing to crusty, stale kings. It was on to greener pastures.

Away we go along Lake Michaigan