I slept until 6:30, waking to a calm and blissfully cool
morning. I made eggs and stuff for breakfast again, using up the rest of the
foil pack potatoes.
We went fishing soon after Jane finished the washing up. There
wasn’t much action, fish-wise. I caught one little bass at the point and had
some nibbles. Jane wasn’t getting anything on a twister tail and switched to a
leech. Soon neither of us were getting any nibbles. Jane’s analysis was, “The trouble is that we
don’t go fishing when the fish are biting. We would need to get up early in the
morning or go out after dinner.”
That seemed contrary to our goal for vacation, which in
general is to relax and do things whenever we feel like it. Still, it was a
lovely morning to be on the water. We rowed around the point where we’d seen
the big fish on Monday. No bites. We continued up the shore, Jane rowing, me
fishing. I set my bobber so the hook
would be deeper in the water and cast away from the shore. “The fish are out
here,” I said.
Nothing happened. “Or maybe they aren’t,” I said.
Suddenly the hook went down in a quite definitive way. “Or
maybe they are.”
The fish on my line acted like a bass, which is to say, the
same as having the hook caught on a log. As I got it toward the surface,
though, it started to fight for real. It was huge. Perhaps the biggest fish I
have ever caught. Jane got the net ready. Unlike previous years, where I got a
glimpse of the big fish just before it broke the line of my weenie pole, I
landed this one. We photo-documented, and let it go. From the photo, we later
estimated its length to be 19”.
My big fish. Note look of astonishment on my face. (Don't just pack it; wear your jacket!) |
For lunch, I made cheese steaks with onions and peppers,
leftover steak, grilled buns, and cheese curds melted on top in the oven
because the sandwiches were too thick to fit in the broiler. If we continued to
overeat consistently for the rest of vacation, we would come out about right
with the food we brought along.
Cheese steaks |
Jane and I packed up our chairs, fishing poles, and leeches
and headed up to Loon Lake’s boat landing. The fishing was slow, but not too
bad. We were there for about an hour and a half. There were periods of apparent
feeding frenzies when the surface of the water roiled with fish activity, their
backs just breeching the surface. I found if I could drop my leech in the
middle of the activity, I was guaranteed a strike. I caught four bass; Jane
caught two pretty nice bluegill. The first three bass were small. At 4:00, Jane
had and empty hook and started putting our things in the car. I cast one last time, just to get rid of the
leech, and caught the best bass of the afternoon, although not as big as the
one I caught in the morning. I landed it without the net. Jane had to get my
fish glove and the camera out of the car for me.
A beautiful day at Loon Lake |
My second best bass of the day |
For supper, we fired up the grill again and cooked the brats
from Zup’s in Ely, which I served with potato salad that I’d made that morning
and a green salad. The brats were very good.
The package of Zup's Homestyle Bratwurst |
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