Tennessee Valley Angler

Over the weekend, my friend Ronald and I took an overnight kayak fishing trip down North Alabama’s Flint River. The water was high from heavy rains a few days earlier, and the fishing has been better. Still, the weather was nice, we caught a few fish, and it was great to be outside.

My kayak fully loaded for the trip.

Although I brought a fly rod (and later broke it…doh!) I never fly fished. For most of the trip, I used a bedraggled old Heddon Tiny Torpedo on my spinning rod. Ironically, I was afraid to assemble my fly rod because, with the swift current and multiple fallen trees in the stream, I thought I might break it when going through some of the tighter turns. At first I tried my go-to favorite for the Flint, a Zoom finesse worm, but in most places the current was so swift that the worm was tough to use properly. So, I tied on the Torpedo and worked it in shooting gallery fashion as we were swept by likely looking spots.

Normally when floating the Flint, we’ll stop multiple times to work through the better-looking areas more thoroughly by wading. This time all the normal hotspots had been transformed into raging rapids (well, at least by Flint River standards). There were few places to beach the boats for wading, so we settled for casting as quickly as we could before getting swept past. We did manage a few fish on the first day. Ronald landed a smallmouth, and I got a nice fat one next to a rock bluff. We missed many more than we caught, which bodes well for later in the year when we can fish the area more methodically. We also caught a few bluegills and redeyes.

The most exciting part of the day came when we went over a waterfall about four feet high. Let’s say five feet, just for drama’s sake. This “waterfall” is normally a road that crosses the river. Under normal circumstances the river passes through a pipe under the road. This weekend the river passed completely over it, and so did we. When I went over and hit the bottom, I slammed into what I think was the pipe where it’s exposed on the lower side. It sounded bad, but there was no permanent damage. I laughed out loud through the whole thing and felt like a real wild man. Ronald went over behind me, and his whole kayak went under when it hit bottom. That was pretty cool (he didn’t think so). I won’t overdramatize, here. Any whitewater kayaker wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but for us novices it was all pretty exciting. And, anyway, if we had hit it wrong, we could have gotten into real trouble, so I suppose it really was dangerous. I’m convinced nothing makes an outdoorsman happier than to have just done something that was probably stupid, crazy, at least somewhat dangerous, and then to have the privilege of telling about it afterwards, with obligatory embellishments of course.

Ronald with our tent and campsite.

The idea was to fish until the afternoon and then find a reasonably secluded island to camp for the night. For much of its length the Flint is an urban stream, flowing through multiple high-end subdivisions, but there are stretches that pass through farm country where a weekend warrior can manage to feel like he’s in the wilderness. That is, if he can ignore the lawnmower whirring in the distance, the dogs barking and the airplanes taking off from the local airport. We found a nice one that seemed to be secluded. We set up camp, built the requisite campfire and had a few rounds of Killian’s Irish Red. When the sun fell, a trio of owls began talking, and it really did begin to feel like we were out there. That was just before headlights streamed into the tent from the direction of the field across the river. Apparently there was a paved road there that we hadn’t noticed. Still, there was only that one car all night. Sometimes being in the type of place where only one car passes all night is more intimidating than being in honest wilderness.

The next day we had a short stretch to float before taking out. The fishing was even tougher. This stretch is one of my favorites, but all the best spots were under way more water than normal. I did manage to catch one nice smallie pictured below.

Ronald seethes with jealousy, watching helplessly while I land and release a nice smallie.

The fishing got so bad that much of the time I just leaned back, enjoyed the breeze and watched the scenery glide by. I also took a few photos, although most of them weren’t very noteworthy. I played around with split-toning a few and liked the look of the one below.

A split-tone of Ronald fishing a lower stretch of the river.

My kayak performed admirably. I bought the Native Manta Ray 11 last year, but have only had it out about a half dozen times. So far I really like it. Ronald was in a sit-inside kayak (the Manta Ray is a sit-on-top or SOT kayak), which did some things better than mine but didn’t seem as well suited to fishing. The Manta Ray proved to be much more stable as a fishing platform, and the self-draining feature proved useful after the waterfall. My comfort level was much higher overall.

It was a fun trip. It’s the first time I’ve done an overnighter on the Flint, and I enjoyed it enough that I plan to do it fairly often. Later in the year, when the temps heat up and the rain lessens, the fishing should be much better.

After getting back to my truck, I managed to slam the ferrule of the top portion of my fly rod in the door. Utter carelessness on my part. I wanted to kick myself, but found the maneuver difficult to accomplish in practice. The ferrule is just cracked, so I hope I can repair it. Really hope so because I like the rod a lot.

-Nathan