Fishing over the 4th of July, 2012

Ok, so part of this blogging thing means that I have to write something every once in a while.  What I'm trying to do is tell some of my best stories, and then once those are in, I figured I can tell some of the more current stuff, as well as my other thoughts.  But, since I will no doubt have plenty of experiences in the meantime, I'll try to put up some other stuff from time to time, in hopes of keeping you all interested and coming back.  This will be one of those times, since I don't have the time to tell one of my long stories, but still feel like writing.

View from the dock

So, I thought I'd let you know about the fishing I did across the 4th of July.  Because both my wife and I are currently unemployed, we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and go up to my in-laws cabin on one of the lakes up near Mille Lacs Lake here in MN.  We are fortunate to have access to the cabin, although its what a friend of mine would call a "shabin", not quite a shack, but not quite a cabin.  In any case, its a place to sleep and get away from the city, with a beautiful lake and plenty of outdoor activities to keep everyone busy.  Of course my favorite thing to stay busy is fishing.  Without anything else to keep me busy, I could easily see myself spending almost every minute up there fishing.  The lake itself is quite nice, but there are also hundreds of other incredible lakes up there that are worth exploring.  Unfortunately, because the boats not in the water (and possibly not working), I stuck it out and fished from shore, which is a small concession on such a beautiful lake.

Where the dock was a couple years ago.

Where the dock ended up this year.

Admittedly, fishing from shore/dock in front of the cabin is actually pretty darn nice.  In the past, I have caught plenty of nice panfish, bass, and northern, right off the dock.  Not only that, but just a couple docks down I had seen some very nice walleye get pulled in just a month earlier.  Unfortunately, as soon as I went down to the dock, I realized I'd need to do a little work first as the majority of the dock was under water as a result of the torrential rains that had fallen recently.  After talking with my wife, and making a call to the in-laws, I put on my swim trunks and my wife and worked to bring in the dock.  As this was our first time messing around with the dock, it took a little fiddling with, but we eventually managed to pull it in.  Unfortunately though, because of my traipsing around in the mud and slime in the shallows, I ended up with dozens of tiny leaches all over my legs.  Having never really had a problem with leaches in the past, I was quite surprised, and spent 15 minutes just scraping off the leaches, and letting the blood stop (don't worry, there weren't too many that had bit yet).

One of the smallies I caught.

In any case, after getting the dock reset I was able to fish fairly easily from the dock.  I got some leaches and spent a good portion of my fishing time with a slip-bobber out in front of me, trying to lull a walleye into biting.  I didn't expect a whole lot, but was fortunate enough to catch several small northerns and several bass, including some really nice smallmouth.  Until this week I had only caught one other smally, but I think they are starting to take more of a fin-hold as I caught three or so, with the largest being over 16 inches, a pretty nice smally in anyones books.

Anyway, after trying for walleye off our dock with no luck, I decided to move and try fishing off of the neighbors dock, the one that I had seen the walleye pulled into several weeks before.  Also, these neighbors were not around, so I knew that I could spend a little time over there.  So, I spent the next evening with a slip-bobber and leach in front of me again, this time with almost nothing to show for it.  The one thing I did catch was a very large bluegill, indicating to me that there may be others in the area.

Neighbors dock

The next day, Friday, started off with rain and was considerably cooler but the morning improved and we started it off by visiting Mille Lacs-Kathio State Park as we are trying to visit all of the state parks in MN.  It was nice, but I don't know that we'll ever return as we don't have a reason to camp there, and with so many other lakes and hiking areas in the region, there is no real reason for us to visit.  In any case, once we got back, the weather turned again and it got cloudy, windy, and cold for the rest of the afternoon.  Despite this, I spent the afternoon fishing off the neighbors dock again.

While there, because I knew there were plenty of decent panfish there, I spent a good amount of time trying to catch some of these.  As you can see, I did pretty well, catching seven very nice sunfish, bluegill, and rockbass.  Initially, I was using flu-flu jigs with wax worms, but after I almost had my leach tipped rod pulled off the dock by a large bluegill, I switched my tactics and used the leaches to go after the panfish.  This allowed only the larger fish to actually take the hook, while the smaller ones would suck it in, but couldn't pull the bobber down and would only rarely get hooked.

That said, I feel like I did pretty good here, but there was one downside to it all.  While fishing on the neighbors dock, with the cold and all, I managed to lose my wedding ring somewhere around the dock.  While the cost of the ring was not that much, the sentimental value was great and I am still kicking myself for not realizing it sooner and putting it away.  I spent several hours with a mask on looking for it on Saturday, but was still not able to find it.  My only hope is that someday, either I or someone will find it and return it to me.

Overall, I had a great week fishing and even brought some home, but alas, losing my ring will haunt me for quite a while.  I'll have to get back over there and fish more.  Who knows, maybe someday I'll catch a fish with a ring in its stomach.  Till then, I'll just have to keep trying!

TLaSS,
Joshua