YAKETTE.....WHAT SHE WAS MADE FOR
by Richard Frye

After waiting over a year the Yakette finally got to do what she was built to do, and that was to get me to these "hard to get to" places. Places you often see and wish you had a boat to drop in to do some exploring and wet a line fer a spell. I'd been to this place a few times when I had the energy to walk around a bit just to check things out. No motorized vehicles are allowed. It ain't a big lake...about 27 acres, but full of nice big fat bass!

Here lately I ain't been too good at picking the right time to go fishin! This damn weather has got the fish and me so confused and it...as Burt Gummer says.."Boggles the mind!" From the top of the dam on my first visit I saw some big'uns rolling and just had to get down there somehow! Lightbulbs went off in my feeble little brain and I went to thinking.....dangerous thing for me sometimes.

I grabbed a saw, a sheet of luan and proceeded to make some sawdust to see if I could come up with anything suitable that would at least float for a while anyway. It had to be light....very damn light! I kinda scaled down the Stealth in a way, but when I was finished and did all the testing on a very windy day with some fairly rough water conditions...another time my sweet wife Kaye was yelling at me and pleading that I have some qualified person look into my mental condition. This was because of the condishuns I was in at the lake that weren't exactly too damn good fer testing any boat for the first time..specially one dat little!

Strong wind and waves with whitecaps. I was even leery myself that the boat would do the job. In 20 mph winds and waves over a foot the tiny boat performed with excellence! She weighed out as most of you who keep up with the Yakoo series at just under 25 pounds...Perfect! Well one thing came up after another, winter set in and the lake froze over, and I didn't get to do what I had in mind, but this year all that changed.

It's a mite steep

As you can see in the pics it's a mite steep up the side of the mountain. Not many folks fish there cause it shore as hell ain't the easiest damn place for an old fart like me to get to. I mean..it's bad enough just walking and climbing that hill fer heathy folks! That ain't to mention hav'n to haul a boat up too! Had to stop and rest several times on the way up.....even the much younger guys I went with the first time had to stop and rest and they ain't even got no heart problems! Hell, I was in better shape than they wuz or maybe it was cause I'm nuts...according to my sweet wife Kaye!

So one day I got a wild hair up my ass, loaded the Yakette and just took off. Told my sweet wife Kaye I wuz going to check out this lake, told her where it was and all that, and that I'd be gone for a few hours. I took her car cause teenagers come out there to park, have beer parties or just "hang out", and have been know to steal stuff from cars or out the back of a pickup, and be gone in no time cause you can see nothing from the lake. Ya'll know I got a GEO Tracker that's a ragtop. Ain't no way to lock it! Don't even know why they bothered to put locks on the doors! All anyone has to do is peel back some velcro and undo a zipper! Hell I can git inside my Tracker before I can get these new britches off that Kaye got me! They got velcro and a zipper too!

I like plain ole cutoff jeans fer boat'n, fishing, deal'n with mud and stuff. After you make it up the hill then you got to go down the hill to get to the lake....worse if you're hauling a boat on a dolly but easier than carrying it by hand! Yeah, I know the boat don't weigh but 25 pounds, but when I get all my shit in it, 2 fishin rods, paddle, life jacket, seat, tackle boxes, lunch bag, miscellaneous stuff and the dolly itself strapped on, that stuff mounts up a bunch of pounds going uphill! I watt'n counting on that! More to deal with going downhill! Gravity adds to that problem too you know!

The road beside the dam

Finally made it to the top then still had to go another 75 yards or so across the road running beside the dam, but it was fairly flat so I got my wind back. At the end, it was down hill all the way! Hey....I got it made! I was a mite off on the "hav'n it made" part! With about a 40 plus degree angle downhill... me and the Yakette almost went into the lake before I was ready! I got in front.....not a good idea on slick grass! Damn thing was running over me! So then I got behind and slid down while holding on to the boat carrying handle. Worked fine long as I grabbed some long weeds and grass now and when to slow my desent. Had to hunt around for some band-aids when I got to the bottom since I got tangled up in an uncountable number of briar bushes on the way down, but otherwise made it without breaking anything.

Loaded and ready

That damn Plavix and other stuff makes the slightest little scratch bleed like a stuck hog! At the waters edge I took a break, launched the boat, and then tried to figure out what I was going to do with the dolly. Never dawned on me before! Didn't want to leave it there, so I just found a place it would fit on the deck and took it with me! I explored the lake and discovered that there weren't a damn place in the whole lake to make a landfall 'cept one! High cliff, and steep banks all the way around!

On the east side I found a little tiny 10 foot by 10 foot shale bed that I dubbed Goosepoop Landing! Seemed like some geese had put claim to it a long time ago and used it for nesting and pooping! Not the best place in the world to have a samich, a coke, and a Hershey bar that melted and run all over the place, but it'd have to do.

Goose poop landing

This really got to me, and I was very alert for any feathered terrorist type foe that might interrupt my lunch. I took the .32 automatic with a full clip of Hydroshocks out my pocket and layed it by my can of coke just in case. I hate damn geese!

I spent all day exploring the lake, and even went up the feeder stream as far as I could. Then I sounded various areas for depth with a lead line. The deepest part was near the dam at 24 feet and depth varied from 8 to 14 feets as the main channel wound back and forth back up to Bird Finger Point. The lake is shaped like a backwards S with the feeder stream at the top with two coves, one on each side of the stream kinda looking like when you give somebody the finger. That's what the top of the lake resembles. I named it Bird Finger Point. Why hell yeah I dubbed this unusual phenonenom of nature....and in the name of the queen!

Later on that day 'round 5 o'clock I ran into another fellow that's a hard core bass fisherman. He had a little 10 foot jon boat and we shot the bull for a long time and fished together for a few hours. He had a neat dolly with big bicycle wheels but just let his boat slide down the hill as he held on to a long rope. Why didn't I do that? I looked at the 14 band-aids on me. We did catch some small bass but nothing even close to the 7 pounder he was telling me about he'd caught out of there. This is one of those guys that does the bass tournements for money, and come to find out is a neighbor that only lives about 10 miles from me.

That damn hill

Dark was settin' in and I headed on back to get the boat loaded and dolly ready to go up that damn hill. I could see this was not going to be fun. Dew was falling and the grass was slicker than goose poop on glass. After several attempts and recovering from falling on my butt at least 16 times I finally made it to the top of the road running beside the dam and looked to see if I had anymore band-aids. It was almost as much fun trying to get all this stuff, me, boat, dolly and all down that long hill back to the car. Bad stuff can happen going down hill! Nothing happened going up, cept it wore me out! Yeah I know there was a road so to speak, but my legs don't work like 4 wheel drive sport'n a granny gear.

Being real careful I made it to the car, loaded up and got ready to leave. My back was kill'n me! I'd been in the Yakette for over 6 hours! My legs went to sleep and my ass was numb! Phil....the guy I met in the lake reached his truck 'bout the time I wuz gettin ready to pull out, so I stopped and we comminced to shoot the bull a little more while I nursed the feeling back in my butt and legs...talking mostly 'bout fish'n.

Well, I had plum forgot that I'd told my sweet wife Kaye that I'd be back in a few hours. See......I'd left about 10 that morning and it was already 9:30 at night when I pulled in! She's took it for granted that I'd be home around 5 or so for supper! Thought that wuz her on the road that I passed 'bout a mile back! I was putting stuff up, boat and all, and every bit of 3 full minutes had gone by when she come slid'n sideways into the driveway madder'n-hell! Jumped out, and raise'n more hell that a sack full of rabid wildcats! Worried and all that something might have happened to me, since I hadn't been feel'n too perky anyway for the past few days.

There are some things she said that even I can't repeat! Whew! Took some kinda doing to cool her off! I mean that little woman in more modern terms went totally ballistic! She was about to call the State Police, National Guard, and the damn Coast Guard! It was about that time Julie Ann the 6 year old grand daugher stepped in at my defense! "Grandma Kaye", she said firmly! "Everybody knows that if the fish are biting and he's having a good time....HONEY always said to give him at least 24 hours before you go nuts!"

I love them grandkids! They sure get my ass out of a tight sometimes! Julie Ann has always called me Honey for some reason..never Grandpaw! Maybe one day Kaye will explain that. Folks think it's cool but I'd even like to know myself! Point is.. the Yakette is a great boat fer packin in, and did a swell job of hauling me around that lake I'd be wanting to check out for a long time.

I do plan to go back over there in a couple of months or so without so much junk in the boat, and sometime it takes that long for my sweet wife Kaye to forget about some things! As we walked in the house she somehow noticed half a box of band-aids plastered all over me, shook her head then gave me a real strange look and said, "I really don't want to know!"

later,
Richard