Some follow-up items in caption format.

 

Finally got this Madison pontoon out on the river - just a short run from the lattitude of our home downstream a bit, maybe 1.5 - 2.0 miles.  Really responsive craft...    you can spin in circles 100 mph cranking on one oar.  Very slow going relative to standard canoe or kayak as you'd figure.  Easy to sit a kid on the seat in front of adult.  Nice to have feet in water, pull over to sand bars with ease, etc.  Sit up a bit higher in the pipe frame seat.  I could dig fishing from this craft.  For this run though, no rod along; let DMW take the oars for a good part of it.  Really easy to strap to the top of a car too, without deflating the pontoons.

Here is the local carp from previous post (7 lber, each fillet was 1 lb), smoked and served.  Smoking details: brine of salt and sugar for approx one day in the fridge.  Then removed, dried, put under fan to let set up.  To fridge for a couple days because I didn't have the time to smoke it right away (didn't plan it as such).  Then put on smoker for approx 6-7 hours.  Consistency, taste pretty good.  A little too salty, probably due to poor construction of brine and/or poor consideration of brining duration.  But with cream cheese or (here) sour cream, the salt is sufficiently cut.  We ate this entire platter in short order.  I call it a moderate success in eating common carp from the river at the bottom of the hill.  I think there is some protein there to be had.

Cow skull, boy and chicken on a roof.

Had some time to fish one morning this weekend.  Catastrophic flooding to the south - Fillmore County and thereabouts.  Root River shot through with flood water.  However, the rain event, as far as I could tell, showed quite a gradient across the region.  I believe a good number of streams in the DA were very fishable.  I woke without an alarm at 530 AM and was nymphing by about 625.  I opted out of the long walk, steep valley stuff.  Instead hit an easy access deal.  A series of holes that is always full of fish.  However, some sacrifice with respect to size distribution of trout.  After working the first two holes I had somewhere around 15 fish to hand.  The fifth fish hit the creel at 808 AM.  At that point I sat down and figured what would come of the rest of the time fishing: more nymphing, a bunch of fish probably.  Odds were nothing too big given water, fact I wasn't going to fish streamers.  I'd already caught one really pretty, fairly large (honest estimate 12-13") BKT pictured above.  Deliberated for a while and said hell with it and went home.  So by 905 AM I wsas home, an outing was in the books; dinner set, entire day remaining.  Not a bad gig if you can get it.

I think this would have been nearly unlimited fish scenario.  Basically just stopped fishing it.  Only tricky part was there was a submerged log at the head of the pool that made start of drift tough.  A whole load of smallish fish, but some nice browns mixed in...    one 11.5" BNT leapt clean three times; testing 2 wt.  His struggle was insufficient though.