Life On Tour

Annie and Dan Keyes Angler: Dan Keyes.

July 24, 2001 • Daniel and Annie Keyes • Archives

Tuesday, July 24

EverStart Practice – 1000 Islands, New York

Dan writes:

Final day of practice, and I still have not made it out to the big lake. Scotty and I left the campground at 5am and trailered down to the Black River, down near Chaumont Bay. We launched the boats and then fought 5-6 foot waves out to the mouth of the river. The smallmouth were not cooperating out there today, and we ended up flipping for largemouth in the reed islands back in the shallow flats. There we caught some decent fish, but I’m not sure what good this did us for if the weather is good enough to get here in the first place tomorrow, then it’s good enough to get to all the good smallmouth spots as well. We finished up around 1pm and returned to camp.

After restringing the line on my reels, I put the kids to work cleaning the boat while I went off for a much-needed shower and shave. After that we dressed and went over to the registration meeting. I like bringing my kids with me on these trips, and to these meetings in particular, so they get to see what it is I do. Tonight though they were more interested in guzzling the free Pepsi products, the first sodas they’ve had in a week, than in paying attention to the meeting. Oh well.

Annie writes:

Today is a busy day. Dan went fishing this morning and returned home at 1pm. We all had work to do on the boat. I got all the tackle organized and put away, Dan did all his lines and set up his rods, and Jeff & Chris cleaned the boat. It was a pretty good system.

We went to the registration and the pairings meeting, and afterward went out to eat. It was so windy that we could not cook out on the grill, and one can only eat so many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We had a very nice dinner – the boys kept the conversation going the whole time. When we left the restaurant we were walking through town towards our truck, and these girls start running down the sidewalk after us yelling “JEFF! CHRIS!!!” Well Dan and I just walked away, and pretended we were window-shopping. It was pretty funny. Apparently they had met at the pool.