The River

The river is its own world. I never knew this until this August when I took my birthday money and purchased a kayak from Dick’s Sporting Goods.

My son, David, had known this for a long time. The river is about a hundred yards from our house. Three summers ago, he and his friend Josh walked up and down the river for miles, fishing in every conceivable spot and getting to know the Middle Prong of the Little Pigeon River like the back of their hands.

This summer, David worked at Dollywood Splash Country. He is conservative with his money, but I encouraged him to use his money to get something he really liked. He bought a kayak to expand his fishing range.

I have been on a kayak many times and always enjoyed it. I thought it would be fun to go out with David and explore the rivers in our area. So, I bought myself a kayak as well, even though I didn’t work at Dollywood Splash Country.

Having purchased our kayaks, we went to a little island in the river near our home where we could get in. We made our way slowly down the river. When we first started, we were as cautious as Southerners driving in Michigan in January. We soon learned, though, that kayaks are sturdy little boats and would do quite well in the rapids or even small waterfalls.

The river is a place for wildlife. It’s like a nature preserve in the middle of the city. As I floated over the clear water, I saw a huge snapping turtle with a shell probably 18 inches in length. It wasn’t the biggest I’d ever seen, but it’s the closest I’d ever gotten to one that big. Not too long after that, I saw a very long snake slithering along the bottom.

The river is a place for interesting people. We encountered one gentleman who spoke to us out of the bushes. He was just wandering the heavily wooded banks with his shirt off. He told us he just enjoyed having adventures and seeing new things. He had come up from Wears Valley to see this area of the river. There are also homeless people living under bridges. Some areas are so isolated it looks like people have fled civilization and set up a little settlement like our ancestors did as they traveled westward. The river is its own world.

As I moved on down the river, I looked around and saw only nature, no sign of the busyness of one of the busiest tourist destinations in the nation. You might as well have been in the middle of the mountains.

It’s hard to fish in certain sections of the river. There is so much pressure from the fishermen who access the river that the fish are few and far between. Taking a boat just a little ways down from those places, you encounter areas humans rarely visit. There, the fish live in abundance: carp, small mouth bass, blue gill, catfish, and gar.

Gar are prehistoric looking fish. They have a long nose filled with sharp teeth. On our trip down the river, my son saw them and wanted to catch one. He moved over to the side of the bank and switched his bait. On his first cast, he caught a blue gill. Then, he said, “I’m going to do a David White special.” He proceeded to cut up the blue gill and prepare it for bait.

Within a few moments, David was fishing with the blue gill on his hook. It did not take long for a gar to bite. It struggled a long time, but David reeled it in. Here is a video of it:

That gar bit him on the arm when it flung itself up, leaving a few small scratch marks.

After that, David and I went on toward our place of exit, the bridge under Chapman Highway on your way out of Sevierville. We had never gone that way before. The water was shallow, and it was very hard to paddle. Eventually, we decided to just walk the kayaks out.

David got to the ramp first, and I saw he was doing something with his paddle. He turned it toward me and on the end of it was a snake. He then flung it away from us, and we got out.

My wife came with our van, and we strapped our kayaks to the top of it. We headed home leaving behind the river, leaving behind a different world.