Vacation, Day 6

Wednesday, July 23

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