Life On Tour

February 9, Lake Wheeler, AL

Dan writes:

The frost glistened like snow in the early morning light as I drove out to the Elk River again, where I met Beau Jones, a kid who’s been following my career through this journal, and who’s been corresponding with me via email for three years. I met Beau the first time a couple of years ago out at Beaver Lake in Arkansas – that’s where he and his family were from until moving over to this area recently. I called him a kid – he was when I first met him, but he’s eighteen now and going off to college soon.

Anyway, Beau and I put the boat in the water up at Decatur, and spent the morning fishing the flats there. This is the most famous and the most popular fishing area on the lake. It is a section about a mile wide and three to five miles long, north of the main river channel and directly across from the town of Decatur. It is one huge stump flat, with channels and ditches scattered throughout, and is about the only area on the lake that has hydrilla. Beau and I spent about three hours wandering around in there today, but between us caught only one fish. Water temperature, like yesterday, was thirty-nine degrees.

The rest of the day we spent moving upriver. This far up, thirty miles from the dam, the lake is very river-like, that is, narrower with a lot of current flow. We fished the mouths of various feeder creeks, we fished rip-rap, and bluffs, and we flipped the wood up some of the creeks, but caught only one more fish all day. The water temperature never rose higher than forty-two degrees.

Annie writes:

Dan was fishing with Beau today, so I got another day off. I am not slacking – I am taking care of computer work I need to catch up on, including taxes, calendars, and working on our budget, so I have plenty to keep me busy.

This afternoon Cooper and I went for a walk, and there was no one around so I was not making him heel. He decided to run into a big field on the side of the road, but he didn’t know there was barbed wire between the field and us. He ran through it, and I heard him yelp. Then I had the problem of getting him back onto this side of the fence. He finally got back through, but the barbed wire had given him a bloody cut on his neck.

Dan got home around 7pm, and we cooked another one-pot meal and ate in the tent.