Spring had finally sprung and a few hours were freed up the other day to get out on the kayaks. I plan on occasionally fishing from our newly acquired yaks and it felt like a good day to get out and paddle. We were keeping in mind you can dip net for suckers at this time of year and if we were lucky, there was a chance we would come across a few of the rarely targeted resident white suckers in the spawn up the creek.

The creek was lower than we expected, but we were still able to get quite far. Along the way we came across a few painted turtles basking on the banks and logs as well as many frogs calling out for mates. We finally came to where we would have to portage to get further up the creek but after a bit of a scouting hike it was clear there was no more really navigable water. But what was there would brighten an already stellar afternoon.
"Hey! Look up there" Frodo spoke up excitedly as he pointed up stream. We all saw the tell tale signs of sucker tails thrashing at the surface of a shallow pool in between two riffles. No one knew why, but the three of us instantly turned around and went running back to our kayaks to grab our dip nets. "Why are we running?" Jay shouted out, as we hopped over fallen trees and pushed through the brush of burdock and dead grasses. "I don't know!", I yelled back as we reached the yaks. After catching our breath we calmly walked back to where we saw the suckers and formulated a game plan.



Out of the wind in the shelter of the creek bed the temperatures were rising steadily and it was clear summer isn't far off. All in all we kept 3 for the bait bag and let the rest go after some pictures of some with different colour variations. It might sound gross, but it was good to smell a fish again. We hiked back to the yaks and paddled off towards the lake, stopping to watch the coots for a few minutes before paddling head on into the wind to the launch. The paddle back was nothing short of exhausting and it felt like I was going nowhere fast, but I made it back before the boys were packed up, so I couldn't have taken that long.
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