The Ultimate Campsite- Part 3

Sunrise on the Coeur d'Alene River

And so for the next 4 nights we stayed at Mike’s farm biking and also fishing on the Coeur d’Alene River. The boat traffic dropped off considerably after the holiday weekend. I settled into a routine of getting up super early, like around 4-4:30, having my morning coffee outside and then launching the kayak around 5 or so, just before sunrise. I would put the fishing rod and just what I needed tackle wise in a zip-lock, then head out from our own personal dock right there. How cool is that!

Kayaking to a fishing spot

I had tried shore casting the first day we were there and unfortunately that did not work at all. So the kayak was the perfect watercraft. I suspected the fish were a lot deeper than what could be accessed from the shore.

Diagram of the "Carolina Rig". I used a number 4 hook and nightcrawler for bait.

I had the rod set up with a 1/4oz weight and what’s called a “Carolina Rig” shown above. I did not use an offset hook. Instead I used a #4 just in case there were trout in there as well as bass. Basically this turned out to be bottom fishing. I paddled a little off the shore by a large tree. I just let the weight down to the bottom and then pulled up maybe a foot or 2. It was pretty far down, I’m guessing at least 30 feet!

3 1/4 lb large mouth bass! The kayak remained essentially motionless.

Anyway, it wasn’t long before the fish were very active! I was just using live nightcrawlers. I swear I can never catch anything with a lure. All they do is get stuck in all my tackle. I wound up catching several large mouth bass, one of which was a 3 ¼ pounder! And one thing that was awesome was the kayak was rock stable during the whole time!

Maybe a 2 pounder or so. You can see how close I was to the shore.

The Daiwa rod held up very nicely as well even though it’s not super heavy duty. I thought that was great. After all, you get into the 4 lb range and you’re talking trophy territory!

So with the biking and the fishing as well as some casual night time observing I would say we definitely hit on the ultimate campsite! We were kind of sad to leave but both of us felt we would come back for sure if we were traveling up here again.

Thanks for reading!

DrDave