muskie - fly rod - kayak

June in the Midwest finally arrived, and we went fishing for our fourth movie - "inland waters kayak fishing". In Hayward, WI. For muskies. Using fly rods. And kayaks. Larry and Wendy from Hayward Fly Fishing company were kind enough to guide us.

John Reinders on only his 200th cast catching his first muskie

John, in the picture above, was onto this muskie - day one, hour four, location two. Nowhere near the mythical 10,000 casts. Lucky or good, we'll never know, but the muskie gods smiled on him that afternoon. I felt pretty lucky as well, having camera in hand capturing the tail dance of an extremely elusive fish. Location two, by the way, was too shallow for traditional boats. Kayaks were perfect and we had the entire stretch to ourselves. Wendy floats this stretch in her drift boat, which also works well. On this particular day, she traded her drift boat in for one of our kayaks and left her boat in my hands to carry our camera guy, while she tried out fly fishing from a kayak.

Camera Platform for our next project

Here's a shot of the maiden voyage of our latest piece of gear. It's a high-tech piece of plywood wizardry floating on canoes. Kind of like the v.1 of Hobie Cats when they came out.

We will soon be starting a kayak fishing project and I wanted a stable way to get out on the water for shots beyond what I can get from land.

stacation - coming soon to a vacation near you

stacation - sta • ca • tion [stā - cā - shuh n]
-noun

1. event that occurs close to home; may replace the family vacation;
2. strongly correlates with historically high gas prices, as well as oil company profits
3. may make destination resorts nervous
4. makes paddling in Wisconsin even cooler, especially if you live here

[Origin: 2008 summer; < L stacātiōn- (s. of stacātiō; stay home and try to have fun; see stacate, -ion); r. ME stacacioun < AF]

Had to laugh when my partner Darren used this word in conversation for the first time. I believe he attributed it to some radio talk show host he had recently heard. Listen for it in a conversation near you.

The joys of small town living

One more reason to enjoy small town living. Shot taken out of our kitchen window looking over the deck and into the back yard. Obviously survived our 100+ inches of snow this past winter.

2008 Water Walker Film Festival Award Winner

The wonderful, and very Canadian, Anne Baxter called late yesterday and informed us that "paddling the solo canoe" had won an award at this year's Water Walker Film Festival. This film festival is all about honoring the memory of Bill Mason, one of modern canoeing's "founding fathers". He also went on to become a conservationist who spent a good chunk of his life bringing attention to Canadian waterways to help preserve them and make Canadians more aware of the resource they had, in many cases at their doorstep. He went on to achieve some global renown for his efforts in conservation. We are happy to be an award winner. Also kind of neat to have made a solo canoe project, as I do believe that was one of Bill's most preferred watercraft.

Coming To A Pond Near You ??

This is what I saw today in our neighborhood. Under the big huge drainage pipe you can see what, for now, is a surprisingly nice pond. Fish in it, birds on it, stable banks, and some kind of ugly trees that are sticking up out of it. But they're part of the waterscape now. I can take my canoe or kayak and WALK to this pond and have a peaceful little float. Even better I can take my kids.

And now today this shows up. Hundreds of feet of drainage pipe. I wonder what they are going to do? hmmmmmm........ I have to give the the city (Stoughton, WI.) some benefit of the doubt, I don't know what they are doing at this point. But the pipe does not leave much to the imagination.

Years ago, this was a gravel pit that one would think would have some pretty high infiltration rates. Apparently either high sedimentation rates or more clay in the soil than expected overcame the infiltration and the pond was unexpectedly born.

I guess I am biased, I've never had a 13-acre pond within walking distance of my house before. I kind of like this "as is". Of course the floods last summer that just about entered my basement are also part of this same pondscape. I swear, the older I get the harder it is to find a simple answer. Hopefully, this will end well.

Tandem canoe video clips

I put up some video clips from paddling the tandem canoe. Below are shots of the front and back covers.