The DrakeCast #74: A Reluctant Cast & Blast

I own a lot of boats, none of which are nice. My armada is a mixture of personal water craft like paddle boards and packrafts, with a few canoes, two tiny john boats, and a two-man raft that will grab hold of your fly line on every cast. For a while I had a wooden drift boat and I still own a share in a 16-foot V-hulled boat with a 25 horsepower motor, but my car does not have the muscle to tow either of those bigger boats.

So last summer, in 2024, I set about looking for one more boat to add to round out my quiver. Something stable enough to stand in and throw a motor on, but light enough to tow with my toy-sized chevy spark. I wanted to be able to chase carp on the flats with a push pole, but also rip around a lake. And I eventually settled upon a 1989 Gheenoe that I found on Facebook Marketplace.

The refinished Gheenoe

When I bought my Gheenoe in the Fall of 2024 from a prison guard who used it for duck hunting, it was full of holes that I set about patching. Having never worked with fiberglass before, I made every mistake imaginable but after a couple hundred hours of sanding, glassing, fairing, adding floatation, and painting an obnoxiously bright blue, I was able to take it out.

Seeing as Gheenoes are beloved by anglers and duck hunters alike, I decided it was the perfect vessel for a cast and blast.

But instead of chasing trout and pheasant on an English Estate, or salmon and ptarmigan in Alaska, or redfish and waterfowl in the Texas marshes, we decided to hit the Mississippi River between Wisconsin and Minnesota in search of a lower class combination: I’m talking about snot tockets and nut smugglers; water wolves and tree chickens; slough sharks and bushytails.
In plain english, northern pike and squirrel.

Wisconsin Surf & Turf

Today on the podcast, we head to the Mississippi river sloughs in search of dinner. As a committed catch and release angler, and a poor hand with a fillet knife, this was going to be a novel experience for me. So later on we’ll be joined by outdoors columnist & regular Meateater contributor Patrick Durkin to talk about the trends in hunting and fishing harvest over the years.

Here’s a link to Pat’s website where you can find his weekly outdoors column.

This episode of The DrakeCast is made possible by those of you who subscribe to The Drake Magazine. We’re hard at work on the Winter issue, which we’re hoping to get on shelves before the holidays. If you’re looking for a great gift to give, consider signing your friend or loved one up for the magazine. It’s $38 and the recipient will be reminded of your generosity each time an issue arrives at their door. You can sign them up by calling 303.917.9006 or by following this link.