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Fishing Stories from Ned Kehde |
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Submitted by Ned Kehde - May 4, 2000 It wasn't the best of spring days for Gary Van Pielt of Frontanec and Renee Shumway of Topeka to launch their new Riverbottoms Guide Service on the Kansas River, but this river will test the resolve of its anglers during the finest of times. On this day the river ran clearer than normal and at a languid pace of about 2220 cubic feet per second. Miles of sandbars and logjams laid exposed to the sun and wind for the first time in years, revealing spots along the riverbed that they hadn't seen since the drought of the late 1980s. These drought conditions also made it difficult for Van Pielt to christen his new 20-foot Polar Craft guide boat and 90-horsepower Yamaha propeller-driven outboard engine. Instead of running 20 miles of the Kaw, as was Shumway and Van Pielt's normal motif, the low water limited them to the riffles and holes near the mouth of Wakarusa River. Even though they slowly maneuvered this new craft only a short distance up and down the river, the motor's cooling system became clogged with sand and overheated and a blade on the propeller shattered, which shows how rough the Kaw is on an angler's equipment. In years past, Van Pielt employed a jet-drive outboard, which allowed him to quickly traverse the many mile of shallow sandbars. Then he could travel in water that was only two inches deep. But traveling across such a terrain became a dangerous and expensive affair. That jet regularly consumed more than 30 gallons of gasoline a day. What's more, the sand scoured the jet-drive's impeller system, making it necessary for Van Pielt to constantly repair it. Then there were unfortunate encounters with logjams, rock piles and walls of water, which scarred not only the boat but nearly endangered limbs and lives. Van Pielt and Shumway have always respected the dangers that lurk around every bend. In fact, every angler who has seriously fished the Kaw has labeled it the most difficult and dangerous river to navigate in the Midwest. Thus when Shumway and Van Pielt guided their clients up and down the river, they always proceeded with extreme caution. But in the past, when they didn't have clients to guide, Van Pielt and Shumway occasionally threw caution to the wind and drove the jet-drive boat across many miles of perilous waters in search of new flathead coverts in this ever changing river. Now those days are behind them. The reason for that is that the new propeller-driven boat forces Van Pielt to negotiate the shallows at a snail's pace. But to run from Eudora to Linwood and on to Desoto even at snail's pace, there had to be more water flowing down the Kaw than flowed on this spring outing. By the time their clients arrived at 4 p.m., in the midst of a thunderstorm, Van Pielt and Shumway had given the new boat a fairly thorough christening. And they even caught four channel cats on Shumway's new batch of blood bait. Once the stormed cleared, this foursome hit the river. Until dusk, they employed heavy-action spinning rods and gobs of Shumway's blood bait. According to Shumway, the storm turned the channel cats sullen, and by dusk the foursome had managed to tangle with only eight channel cats. Then shortly after sunset, they began their quest for one of the Kaw's titans, and visions of a 60-pound flathead danced about these anglers' heads. For four hours, they used heavy-action casting tackle and lively goldfish to probe a deep flathead lair, but these cats failed to stir. Then around midnight a dense cold fog shrouded the river, making the fishing too uncomfortable to endure. So they called it a night, but as they left, unrequited dreams of a donnybrook with a massive flathead lingered in their heads, and they said they would be back. |
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