Epic adventure on Mississippi River backwaters

Hello friends, My daughter Selina Walters is 22, a double major with a minor at UW-Stevens Point and, to put it simply, I do not get to see her very often. This summer Selina will be living out of a backpack and a tent while doing research on Apache Trout in the Apache National Forest in the mountains of northern Arizona. I was pleasantly surprised when she told me that she could spend some time with me for spring break, so I came up with a simple idea to do some perch and walleye fishing while camping on the backwaters of the Mississippi River near Buffalo City.

Wednesday, March 22 High 37, Low 29

Actually, this trip was not completely simple. It would require an ATV, a trailer to pull behind it and a smaller feed cart behind it to haul our gear about 3.7 miles down a trail on the Mississippi.

We would fish either backwaters or the main channel and we would sleep on the ground in a tent on the backwaters. Naturally, the pups Ruby and Red would be along and they had a blast as we made the journey. Ruby will be seven in May and never missed a beat on that run.

I have done this adventure three other times and if the backwaters are high enough, the perch and walleyes are in them. If not you have to fish the river. We liked the remoteness and being out of the wind in the backwaters and that is where we set up camp and then put out three rods apiece with minnows, red worms and night crawlers. After that we built a very comfortable camp and did what we are very good at and that is watching the world around us. Red and Ruby would be on a nonstop chase of what can we hunt. After two hours all we had was a small gator northern pike, a perch and a bluegill and we made the decision that we had to fish the main channel.

It was just before this that very bad luck struck, Selina was walking with a rod that had a Rip n Rap on it and one of the hooks became very stuck in her thumb. I had a very bad feeling when I first saw it and Selina was taking an ugly situation quite well. There was pain and it was an ugly job but Chief Surgeon Walters got the hook out and Selina still has the majority of her thumb.

So, we have like two hours of daylight, we start shore fishing the main channel of the river and right away we have action. Unfortunately it’s all suckers and red horse. Our poles are spread out over about 50 yards and each one is leaning on a stick. We are looking for a hot hole. Good luck came our way when we caught a jumbo perch and then another and we had found a hot hole that held pre-spawn perch. By dark we had seven and our mood was excellent as I knew we would kick some butt come sunrise.

We had a whole bunch of fun around the campfire and I cooked “health sausage” and nothing else. Health sausage is loaded with fat, boiled but not in this case enough to make it warm and we could both feel all the blood veins near our hearts clogging with fat.

Thursday, March 23 High 42, Low 29

We were over to our honey hole at first light and the local flock of perch were quite hungry. We had lawn chairs so we could do what we do best which is watch the river flow and the dogs fight but we were so busy we could hardly sit. We let all the sumo, pig mamas go and we both felt good about that and I watched as Selina really got into this type of fishing.

I had one of my rigs get hit hard and ended up catching a 38-inch gator, which had just spawned, and naturally we released her. Selina has been overscheduled for about six years and I can see her getting worn down from school, a job in the bug lab, and even a bit of a social life, as well as being active in school organizations like the Fisheries Society, of which she is the vice president.

I believe this journey was really good for her and as usual, we had blast!

Sunset