Sam and I woke up at 3:45AM and got to Apple Pie Ridge around 5. We started kayaking around (ask Sam) after about 10 minutes of paddling we went left and got stuck in the mud literally…we couldn't move at all. It was terrible! As soon as we got to open water we bottomed out. You would paddle, but feel the bottom of the kayak in the mud. The only way to move was to literally dig mud with the paddle and use it to push. We did this mud swimming-technique for about an hour. We could sor of make it to the banks by mud swimming, but when we would get there, the moment we stepped out of the kayak we would be in waist-deep mud, which was terrible, obviously. When we stepped out the boat completely though our legs would get stuck and to get out of that we had to literally get on all fours to create more surface area until we could get "unstuck," back into the boat. I think Russel explained this to me at some point.
We were mud crawling in the first inlet on the left out of the kayak channel. We basically moved the perimeter of the inlet, which looks like a little bay on the gps. It was also to the left or south of the levee really close to the kayak channel. After mud crawling for about an hour we decided to just bag it and go to the levee (marked white on the map). The sun had fully risen by the time we got to the levee.
We approached the levee from the South and reached the Southeast corner of the levee. Once we got there we parked our kayak on the beach of the levee. We walked about 40 yds and found a small pond, which was the second pond on the gps. We set up on the north side of it. We finished setting up right about sunrise which was probably around 6:30 AM.
We set up with the sun to our left so that we could actually see the pond that we were hunting (we made the mistake of setting up into the sun last time). This was a really cool set up, Sam didn't love it, but I thought it was very aesthetic. The pond was about 200 or 300 yards in diameter, and pretty close to a perfect circle. There was some coverage around the perimeter. There was a bit of tall grass, not sure what type of grass it is. There was a little outlet towards the larger pond. The pond was not very deep, maybe two or three feet near the edges. We saw all types of wildlife. Many many birds! Lots of the tweety birds. We thought they were American Snipe, but I think this is what they actually are:
These guys kept coming up to us and checking our decoys and then flying away really quickly. There were lots and lots of birds. I can't remember if we saw any comerants. The tweeties were coming into our decoys, but they weren't landing in them. We hunted for about an hour and we didn't see a single duck.
After we sat in the blind for an hour we walked around to see if anything was happening elsewhere and to check out the spot.
We found a cool spot near the back of the levee area that could be worth hunting. The levee continues which is hard to tell from the map, but we were thinking that you could hunt blind 4 and have some success. Blind 4 is south facing and we saw tons of birds nearby in the pond in front of it. If you're walking on the levee, the water on the north side is really deep and choppy, the water on the south/left is super shallow and dead calm. The retrieve seems difficult, but otherwise its probably a very manageable hunt. Again, we saw tons of birds in this area and there is no reason that waterfowl wouldn't be there.
The machetti worked great to build the blind. We put three sticks in our blind that also worked and we put foliage in there that worked as well. I think we saw some herons. The Kayaks withstood the great mud adventure, but required about two hours worth of cleaning afterward, but they held up. Make sure you put all of the extra gear you have in those Northface bags so it doesn't get nasty if there is mud. Make sure you close your spring caps to protect the valves from mud. The paddle had some issues because there was mud stuck in the handle piece but it seems to be resolved. Don’t bring the extra fishing stuff when you're hunting, I think you should, however, bring the life vest. Quack is getting much better. I need to buy a lanyard for the call.
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