Fishing Day Bookends
It was a little windy, but Tom, Seth and I wanted to try our old spot at Strawberry Bar since we hadn’t been there in awhile. We bump-bumped over the waves, occasionally getting a spray of lake water in our faces, until finally reaching the bar–about two miles from our resort. When we arrived, I reached over to pick up our old, tried-and true Cass Lake map. I had slipped it under the fishing rods, thinking they would hold it down, but discovered my thoughts were wrong. The map had blown away on the windy ride over. Luckily, we don’t use it much anymore, but losing it was still rather sad.
Our luck at Strawberry Bar was also sad. We caught nothing. After one long pass through and nary a nibble, we reeled in and moved to the Potato Island area. There, we ended up with 12 nice perch (tying our record for the year…which isn’t saying much!) in a just a couple of hours.
While we were out fishing, Paul and Melissa, Ben and Elle had departed for home. We were sorry we had missed saying a proper goodbye to them (i.e. hugs all around). Our end of the resort will be very quiet for our last two days without our next-door neighbors.
Following an afternoon nap (for me) and bike ride (for Tom), several of us walked over to the lodge for ice cream. Ollie wanted Superman ice cream, which provided some great photo ops of his cute face smeared with blue ice cream. Cousin Deb joined us for ice cream too, and after our snack, the two of us worked on some knitting. I was finishing up a washcloth and I refreshed Deb’s memory with quick lessons for casting on and the knit stitch.
When it started to sprinkle, we headed inside to start on supper. Luckily we had caught some fish in the morning, as tonight’s meal was a fish fry (on the stove). We added a Caesar salad and tater tots to round things out.
After dinner, we watched another episode of Only Murders in the Building, while waiting for it to get dark outside. This was the night we would try to catch some walleye! Deb and Roy had nearly reached their limit on walleye, and Roy was kind enough to lend us some Rapala fishing lures, explain his tactics, and point us in the right direction. In all these years, it’s something we have rarely tried, mostly because we don’t want to go out at night, but also because we have no clue what we’re doing, LOL!
Tom, Maddie, and I went out to a shallow 8-9’ bar between Birch Villa and Star Island called “Tom’s Bar” (a.k.a Tom’s Thumb). There was lightning in the sky, off in the distance, so we were happy to stay close to home in case we needed to make a run for it. About a half-hour into the trip, I felt a pretty strong tug on my line, and reeled in our first (and only) walleye–a 15-inch-er.
Despite the guidance Roy had given us, we were befuddled when our lines tangled several times, and we were bombarded with bugs whenever we turned on a flashlight to attempt to untangle them. After the 3rd tangled mess, we finally gave up and headed in around 11:00 p.m. It was a good thing we did. Just as we pulled into the dock it started to rain.
All in all, it was a good day. When you’re at the lake, any day that starts and ends with catching fish can’t be all bad.