There used to be a spot in town a lot of guys would fish in high school, the fishing was never great and the gar were there some (though a few took care of that for the rest of us with bows every now and then) but it was our place to hang. The best part was it only was a few minutes from the school and only took driving into an empty lot in the back of a neighborhood and a short hike down hill. Once there you would be greeted by an old railroad bridge over the water, a dam with a spillway in the middle and usually quiet nature unless another group (that you most likely knew) was already down there.


Much to my dismay, when I got home from college this summer there were houses in that empty lot and it appeared basically inaccessible now. Fast forward 2 months and I had a kayak and a plan on how to get there again. My plan was pretty straight forward, I would put in the water in a park not all that far away and float down to it.



Since I knew it was very likely many people didn't go there anymore and nobody new was learning about it, I thought the fishing would be good and I would have my own honey hole more or less. I loaded up the yak, grabbed my gear and started early one morning to spend the morning down there. The trek in was rougher than I thought it would be and I found a few places I had to get out and pull my yak through or carry it around rocks in the way.Eventually, after a few breaks to swear and lament the death of one of my shoes, I made it to the spot where I knew it started to get deep and remembered the reason I was here.




From here it gets about 6-7 foot deep and goes on like that for about 200 yards, the bridge is halfway down and the dam is the end of the deep section. It was just one of those places where you get the feeling no other human has been there in a long, long time. It was quiet and peaceful, as I started to paddle in, a huge bass broke the water and I began to get excited.my excitement didn't last long however because I glanced over to the side of my yak and got a glimpse of this guy.



This shifted my attention from bass to gar and I started to look around a little more. I guess I hadn't realized before how many gar really were shot here when everyone came down here all the time. Before I got to the bridge I counted 30 gar, ranging from a foot to 2 and a half foot mostly with some a little bigger and one(in the picture) 4-5 foot long based on him next to my 12' yak. Being relatively new to kayaking and not exactly an expert angler I decided what looked like a good meal to a bass probably appealed to gar as well and I pushed on to the dam to fish from more solid footing.After a while spent on the dam casting everywhere I could reach I sat and just enjoyed the view for a while and thought about how crazy it was that an entire subdivision in the middle of town was just beyond the trees on the bank to my right. I snapped a picture of the bridge from the dam and the water flowing down the spillway and went on my way.






The whole time I was down there, plenty of fish were active on the other side of the bridge from the dam but I shut down the fishing side of my brain by this point was just in the for scenery by now. I slowly and almost silently paddled back towards home, passing gar and bass living side by side at least for now. Probably the coolest thing was pulling up past a spotted fawn very clumsy crashing through brush on the bank, blissfully unaware I was there.

I got to the point where I had to get out and pull again and decided my yak had earned itself a "cool car pic" on the river so I got out, took one then pulled, carried, and paddled my way home.




All in all it was great to see an old haunt of mine get returned to a much more natural state but part of me will miss the trips down there with the guys plus a few hours spent with a girl here and there and wishes that others would still get that chance.