A fishing trip

Hard to believe it’s already June. What happens to the time? Pretty soon the days will be getting shorter already and we’ll be heading for winter. I just finished my garden. Things are growing nicely. The pepper plants I raised over the winter are not as big and green looking as the ones I bought and they look kind of sad, but I hope they survive and bear fruit.

Even with trying to get my garden seeded and planted and the yard spruced up I still managed to go fishing three times so far. The Walleye are biting now and you have to go if you want to take advantage of that. For Walleye we go to the Big Whiteshell Lake and most of the time we are successful. The limit is 4 Walleye, which in a way is too bad. It seems almost non-productive and irrational to go all that way for just 4 fish, but those are the rules. If I were a native, I wouldn’t have those restrictions, but that is another story.

Of course, we don’t just go for the fish. It’s the whole package. Being together with friends, spending time on the water and just having a good time.

Anyway, on our second trip things went not as smoothly as we anticipated. About halfway there, my friend discovered that he forgot the key to the motor. Without the key, the motor won’t start. Without motor no sense launching the boat. The waves were high that day with whitecaps and the wind was blowing strongly from the north. Obviously rowing was out of the question and we were left with only one option: to fish from land.

We stopped at a nice little picnic ground but caught only one Pike. Then we headed for our final destination and decided to fish from the dock. We had no other choice. To our surprise the fishing turned out extremely well. We caught Pike and Walleye. And they were of descent size, too. It was damn cold in the wind and we put on all the clothing we brought along.

Every negative side always has a positive side. I didn’t have to take a Gravol pill, which I surely would have needed with those high waves.

One little mishap almost caused us to go home with no fish. We had nine Walleye when to our dismay the chain with the fish got tangled up under the dock in some rocks and we couldn’t pull the chain out of the water. After about 30 minutes of trying to dislodge the chain with a long paddle we finally just tried brute force to pull it out. The chain ripped and we lost 2 fish, but we managed to catch our limit anyway.

So a day that started out unpromising and disappointing turned out okay. It proves again, you just can’t give up. Sometimes we have to change strategy and compromise and make the best of a situation. Crying doesn’t help.

We were fishing again last Friday. Even then it wasn’t smooth sailing. We didn’t forget the key to the motor and we made it onto the water. The wind was calm and the waves normal for the lake. We caught fish, some Pike. For the Walleye we have a live-well, but the Pike we put on a stringer. Since we had no metal chain we used a plastic stringer. Not a good idea. This stringer was only 2 years old, but the plastic was already brittle. We lost 2 big Pike when they broke the plastic hooks. Lesson: don’t buy plastic stringers!