It's fishing week #2, and although we've lost our good fisher-girl Leah, we've gained Seth and Maddie this week, who both enjoy fishing and bring our boat good luck. We decided to rent our boat from Birch Villa by the day this week, as we know we might be fishing with my Dad in his boat some days. Today, we took our rented boat with the four of us through the channel and over to, you guessed it...Pike Bay! (Where else do we catch fish on this lake??) We went back to the ridge along the western shore where we had success on Friday. We ended up marking five hot spots on the GPS, as we kept finding fish all along the ridge. Our total for the day was 29: 18 rock bass, 6 bluegill, and 5 crappie! We can't remember ever catching 5 crappie in one day on Cass/Pike, so we were quite happy, especially since several of them were really nice 12" and 13" ones.

In the afternoon, Tom and Seth cleaned fish. Tom was very happy to have a helper with such a large catch, and fish cleaning has been a bit challenging this year with his left hand nerve issues. I spent the afternoon visiting with Beth, Deb, Melissa and Mom at the beach.

The evening brought our annual dinner out at Ruttger's Birchmont Lodge on Lake Bemidji. We bumped into Birch Villa's previous owners, Karrie and Mark Nelson, who surprised us with the news that they are now owners of Ruttger's! How cool is that?

After dinner, Tom, Seth, Chloe, Beth, Elise, Zach and I rode bikes around the lake. It was a beautiful 16-mile ride, and for the first time in several years, we had no major issues or problems...no fireworks crowd, no bike rental issue, no flat tires, and no thunderstorms! We made it to Paul Bunyan and Babe where we took a few pics, this year with the new sign: #ONLY in MN. From there Seth, Chloe and Zach loaded up their bikes and headed home, while the rest of us rode back to Ruttger's. Back at the cabin, we all treated ourselves to a bowl of ice cream.