Wrapping It Up Before I'm Belly Up

The warm trend kept up this winter, but it stayed cold enough to keep ice. We never had more than 5-inches around here. Easy on the auger, hard on my mom and the other people who worry about me. I did find myself extra cautious. I rarely went without my spikes hanging from my neck and even hung a boat cushion off of my shoulder on the last day of my season. My kids always wore their life vests, at least until we'd covered a lot of water and drilled a lot of holes to determine that it was safe.

This will by no means go down as my best year ever as far as the fish go.  I had my share of mishaps, too.  I got wet again trying to make it over the shore ice at the end of my last day out, leaving everyone exasperated by my stubborn drive to fish.  No new records.  Caught a few more nice pike, but flags were few and far between.  Never seen the panfish so skiddish and lock-jawed.  Could hardly find the perch and never found an active school of nice hungry jumbos like in years past.  I think the strange weather probably screwed things up under the ice.  I don't want to think that the lake is out of monster pike and pig perch.  I'm actually sure it's not.  The fishing pressure is next to nothing and I am quite certain that nobody is taking either out of there in any kind of numbers.

Though it wasn't the year I was drooling about in December, I found every trip to the ice purely enjoyable.  It's that "never more alive" thing (which is ironic because my family was sure that ice fishing was going to result in my death).  Losing myself in that wide open is intoxicating.  Searching and tweaking and adjusting until I solve the puzzle and find the active fish puts me in a euphoric state of mind.  Knowing that a flag could pop at any time and I could go into battle with a 40+ inch pike is just good stuff.  I'm happy out there.  I'm happy otherwise, but having a passion that exudes from your bones is the cherry on top of a good life.  I can be objective and understand why someone would say, "It's just fish, get over it."  I don't know why they get my serotonin flowing, but man they do, and I thank God that he made this part of who I am.  If it isn't too late and you're not already muttering "freak," I should digress and highlight some of the good and some of the bad.

I took a Friday off to hit the ice alone in early February or so.  I wasn't intending on bringing Lincoln, but when it was time to drop him off at preschool/daycare it dawned on me that this was a great opportunity to spend a day just him and me.  He was thrilled with the idea, so I suited him up and headed north.  Lincoln is barely four, so he can pretty much drive you crazy at any given moment.  For example, the process of getting him dressed usually involves him walking to 3 different rooms, wrestling with the dog, playing with 7 different toys, 2 arguments with his brother, a story about why he loves his mom so much, and getting hurt and screaming like he's just been scalped alive and the open wound is being soaked in salty lemon juice.  All the while I'm standing there with his shirt in my hands and have called his name so many times the dog has started coming to it.

ADHD Lincoln didn't show up to the ice that day.  After a bit of searching, we found an active school of gills.  I sat the boy down on a junior sized bucket, gave him a fishing pole, and let him go to work.  No ADD medication has ever worked like this.  He was on his game.  He sat just as quiet and still as one of those British guards with the tall fuzzy black hats.  He listened intently to my instructions and jigged with the precision of a grizzled veteran.  He was in the zone and he stayed in the zone.

I haven't been able to break him of his mama's boy thing, and let me tell you it's incessant and extreme, so you can bet I was thumping my chest in man pride.  Daddy's little fisherman.  He now announces to Hayden and Luke that he still loves his mom, but he loved his dad that day he took him ice fishing.  Then he says, "Right, Dad?" like it's just normal and everything's cool.  Small victories towards the greater battle, I guess.  Anyway, Linc pulled a couple through but was having a hard time getting the timing down on setting the hook.  Pretty soon I became the hooker and he became the reeler inner.  In his world, the reeler inner gets the credit for the fish.  He also tells everyone that he was a better fisherman than Dad that day.  I'll give him that one if it will keep the passion alive.

All of a sudden, I'm remembering the exact date of that trip.  It was February 10.  You know how I know that?  Because it was Luke's birthday and we were several hours late getting home.  After Lincoln had caught several gills, he got hungry.  We ran to McDonald's to get some food to eat in the shanty.  A  pretty good snow storm had kicked up and Lincoln had started talking about being cold.  His eyes were getting heavy and I saw him sneak a few yawns.  The light bulb appeared above my head.  Lincoln taking a nap=uninterupted fishing time for Dad.  I should also add here that I had recetly lost my cell phone and forgot to bring my watch that day.  Why this is an important detail will make sense later.

I turned on the heater in the shanty and grabbed a couple of boat cushions for Linc to sleep on.  He knocked out almost before I could back out and zip up the flap.  When he woke up, I remember being a little disappointed that he had taken such a short one.  In reality, he had been asleep for over 2 hours.  He had also started the nap later than normal.  My fish brain doesn't have room for all of those details.  It also didn't have room for how long it takes to break everything down in a snow storm and then drive home in said snow storm.

Let's see if you're with me.  Luke's birthday.  Mom is hoping to go out for dinner and then do presents and cake.  Dad is on the ice with Mom's baby in the middle of a blizzard.  Mom has no way to contact Dad.  Dad's fish brain doesn't tell him that he should contact Mom.  Dad is several hours late.  Whose head do you think is about to explode?  I won't tell you, also, that I started up the Jeep and put Lincoln in there so that he could be warm while I packed up.  I apparently took so long that he developed the urge to pee, held it as long as he could, and then finally gave up and let lose all over his 2 layers of pants, his snow pants, his socks and boots, and the car seat.  Still haven't learned that "don't give Gatorade to your kids when you take them ice fishing" lesson (see Sophomore Blues entry).

Michelle could have let me have it way more than she did when I got home.  She was pretty understanding or at least had calmed down by then.  I should add that Luke's real birthday party was the next day and I was every mom's dream as a birthday party thrower assistant.  I even stood on a chair holding a pinata so that 6 year old boys could swing a two inch thick wooden dowel at my knees.  Yeah, I've seen the America's Funniest Home Videos clips.  I knew what was at risk.  I wanted to be able to fish again with my wife's blessing, so if it meant taking a wild shot to the knee cap, bring it on.

In my head, that story was in the "good" category.  I guess I forgot about the whole ruining Luke's birthday thing.  That picture that I have in my head of Lincoln, the dialed in fishing master, must have blocked it out.

Yeah, it must have.  Because I screwed up in an all too similar fashion later that same month.  This time with Hayden.  My trying to figure out the fish thing takes place at home probably more so than on the ice.  I read everything I can on the internet, including forums.  I stumbled across a few different threads about how dead smelt is the bait to use if you want to catch the kind of pike that give small children nightmares.  As soon as I read that, my mission in life became getting my hands on some smelt.  I started by looking into frozen smelt but the only way that I could get them was ordering them, and the shipping was through the roof.  Then I discoved that they have them in Gull Lake and it's quite a big deal for guys to go out and catch them.  My new mission became finding out everything I could about ice fishing for smelt, and to troll the forum for any information about how it was going on Gull Lake this year.

Luke and I had a pretty good initial scouting trip, with the exception of finding the lake 90% open water when we got down there.  People were helpful and we found where there were two small bays at the south end that had good ice.  We got there early enough to try for some pike and for Luke to skate.  No flags and Luke face planted and got a bloody nose.  Why are my good trips coming off smelling less than rosy?  He was okay and still in the game, so we joined the little shanty town that was starting to grow over in the second bay.  Once in the shanty, Luke was content to eat beef jerky and potato chips while I tried to figure out how to catch the pike candy.  The schools showed up right away and I got all kinds of bites.  What I didn't have was the knack for hooking them.  Got about 100 bites.  Caught 4.

It could only get better from there, so the very next week I asked Hayden if she wanted to come with me to try it again.  I promised her ice skating and non-stop action on the fishing pole.  We were both pretty excited about it.  What I didn't factor in was that I had taken a half day off of work when Luke and I had gone.  I worked a full day before Hayden and I headed down.  Made it tough to get down there with any kind of daylight left.  It also started sprinkling the minute we exited the expressway.  The sprinkles turned into a full blown rain shower by the time that we got to the lake.  When that voice inside my head (logic, reason, sound judgment) tells me I better go home, I answer it with, "I'm here.  I'm gonna fish."  We were there, so we were gonna fish.

I apologized to Hayden that she wasn't going to get to skate, but promised that it would still be fun.  I asked if she wanted to wait in the car until I got the shanty up.  She said she wanted to stay with me.  I put my extra coat on her so that she could stay dry and we trudged our way out to Smelt-ville.  I picked a spot and started to set up, but our would be neighbors came out of their shanty smoking, drinking, and cursing.  Probably not the best atmosphere for a daddy-daughter moment, so we moved to the other side of shanty town.

Once we were set up, Hayden got busy on the snacks.  I tried to find the fish.  They showed up immediately just a week before.  That night, there was barely a trace.  No schools, just individual fish here and there.  I dropped my bait above the first fish and it went screaming away like its tail was on fire.  Uh-oh.  Tried another one.  Same reaction.  Went like that all night and not one full school showed up.

In the mean time, Hayden was done with the snacks and had figured out pretty quick that the fishing wasn't worth her time.  In a small shanty full of equipment, chairs, and a red hot lantern, she was all over the place.  She squeezed behind me because she wanted to see what was in the bag in the tight place between my chair and the wall, she cut it close with the lantern a couple of times, she dropped my braid cutting scissors down the hole, broke the scoop off of my ladle trying to dig a swimming pool for the minnows, kept trying to wander outside . . .  I wasn't getting much fishing done.  She finally put some minnows in their new pool and named them all.  This kept her busy for a little while.  Not that I was able to catch anything anyway.

I started feeling bad about dragging her out there.  Of course I had envisioned her skating to her heart's content with a bright orange sun setting in the sky behind her and then pulling up fish after fish, and enjoying every minute of it.  A cloud of dread formed around me as I thought about her standing in the cold dark rain while I took down the shanty and tried to fit everything back in the sled.  It got a little darker when she said that she was cold and hungry.  I got the coat back on her and got to work.  She was a trooper.  If she was miserable, and I'm sure she was, she never said it.  She actually helped me pack up and stayed tough as we sloshed back to the Jeep in rain that must have been a half a degree above freezing.

Between the drive, unloading everything on the sled, walking out, setting up, taking down, walking back to the Jeep, loading everything again, and driving back home, that trip takes forever.  I got Hayden home at around 10:30 on a school night.  To make things worse, the evil dog was asleep with Michelle and went ballistic when the garage door went up.  Understandably, she was less understanding this time.

That trip was kind of the beginning of the end.  The fish got really tough to catch on my home lake.  I'd find them and they'd take a good long look at my bait, but they just weren't eating.  Sometimes they'd sit on it for minutes at a time without so much as a taste.  I'd still catch them, but one or two at a hole and they'd shut down or move on.  Flags became almost nonexistent.  I'd go whole days with one or two flags and it became common to pull in a roughed up minnow.

My enthusiasm unwavering, I told Michelle that all I wanted for my birthday is 2 days of complete ice fishing indulgence.  She granted me my wish, so I was up at 5:00 on the morning of my birthday and on the ice before the sun was up.  My dad called to ask about the ice and to say that he and my mom were worried about me.  The first thing that I had done when I got out there was measure the ice.  It was ugly on top, but it was 4-5 inches thick and there was still some good, solid, clear ice under the junk.  I told him that I had a boat cushion on a rope around my neck and my spikes.  He didn't seem too reassured.  I've always wanted to please my parents, and the day I turned 38 I started getting a nagging feeling in the pit of my gut that they were none too pleased.

I caught a 40-inch muskie on my birthday last year.  I thought of it as God's little present for me.  He must not have been too happy with me either, because no such present waited for me this year.  I had a typical day of late.  Caught a few here and there, but only if I moved a lot.  A few flags, but they kept dropping the minnow.  Caught one small bass on a creek chub.  In the evening, I put my shanty up over 40 feet of water to fish for crappies.  Someone who lives on the lake felt compelled to yell out and ask me how thick the ice was.  He was using his "You're an idiot" tone.  This was the thickest ice on the whole lake, so I felt okay.

The crappies didn't disappoint.  There was a distinct school just off the bottom and another suspended in the upper half.  When I dropped my jig to the lower school, the screen would fill from top to bottom as the fish crawled out of the woodwork to investigate.  I used a glowing Ratso tipped with a minnow and they found it to be delicious.  I used a second dead-stick rod with a minnow on a bare hook.  I had to give it up because I couldn't keep up with both rods.  Pulling fish out of 40 feet of water is a death sentence for them.  The pressure change blows up their swim bladders and causes their eyes to pop out of their heads.  I kept them for a couple of fish eaters at work.

My dad called in the middle of the maylay to suggest that I sit in front of the fire and watch some TV with him.  This meant that my mom was still worried.  Oh man.  Chasing these crappies was probably what I had been looking forward to most since I had a hunch that they'd be aggressive when the rest of the fish in the lake were not.  They were living up to my expectations and then some.  Guilt for making my mom worry and knowing how concerned everybody else was made me finally start to wonder if I should be concerned.  I decided that I had pushed my luck far enough.  I abandoned the hundreds of active fish, broke camp, and headed back to the dock to drop off my shanty and other things before getting my tip-ups.

When I approached the dock, I noticed a little more water around it and that the water was starting to creep on top of the ice.  I made it on the dock as dry as a bone, but still had my tip-ups on the ice behind me.  I put my spotlight on them and found that I had a flag up.  I tested the ice and it moved a little, but it had just held me.  I tentatively put my weight back on it, but no sooner did I let go of the dock when the ice caved in around me.  It's only waste deep there and I scrambled out quickly.  I wasn't cold, just wet.  Wet and stupid.

I was supposed to sleep at my parents' that night because they live close by and I had planned to head right back out in the morning.  I sat out there in the dark in my wet pants and boots, phone in hand, for several minutes before calling them.  This whole fishing thing for me, although annoying to everyone because it's about all I talk about, is considered overall by my family to be good and healthy.  By making everyone worry and then proving them right by falling through, I felt that I had tainted that.  I know that I carry my obsession too far at times, but it's usually pretty harmless.  This was one of those times when I was purely selfish and hurtful to those around me.  After screwing up Luke's birthday and keeping Hayden out in the cold until 10:30 in the rain and dark, I was beginning to recognize a theme.

When I tell that voice, "I'm here, I'm gonna fish" there's usually more to it.  I stifle it to keep it from becoming a full conscious thought, but it's there.  I'm here, I'm gonna fish . . . even if Michelle gets frustrated because it's my third night away this week, and she's been saying she'd like some time with me . . . even if my mom and mother-in-law are worried sick about my safety . . . even if I haven't seen my kids much lately and should get home to help put them to bed . . . even if I have a million things to take care of at home that should have been done 2 weeks ago . . . even if I'm dragging my kid out for the millionth time and they just want to be home . . .

I'm blessed to have a passion.  It's brought me endless joy.  I have the opportunity to share it with my kids and others around me.  What I'm just starting to learn is that I have to get a handle on managing it.   Find the brakes.  I don't think I have any right now and didn't think I needed them until I fell through after ignoring countless warnings.  God thumped me on the head that night.  Got me good with one knuckle.  He could have used a sledge hammer.  I could have gone through in 40 feet of water in the pitch dark, without a single soul around to drag me back out.  I better start listening before he reaches for something with a little more heft.  I better wrap it up before I'm belly up.  More practically, I better learn a different answer to that little voice when it tells me that it's time to go home.  If I don't, I might not end up belly up, but the good graces of those that are important to me will be belly up, bloated in the hot sun, and floating amongst trash and dirty foam in stagnant brown backwaters.  Put the fishing pole down, Matt.  Put . . . the fishing pole . . . DOWN!

Making the Most of A Short Season

I'm not going to complain about having a warm winter.  It has made my life easier and more comfortable in most areas.  Less shoveling and roof raking.  The furnace doesn't have to run as much.  Driving is safer.  Getting the kids ready to go somewhere is less of a hassle.  The only downside, as far as I'm concerned, is that it puts the kibosh on ice fishing.  I had pretty much written the season off when after a few cold days my friend John asked me if I wanted to give it a shot.  We weren't positive that we had enough ice, but we were both ready to give it a go.  I threw my stuff together and we headed out the next morning.

We were surprised to find that we had 5-inches of good solid ice.  We spread our tip-ups along two different shores and then went after panfish.  It wasn't a fast bite at first, but we found some perch and a huge school of bluegills.  They pretty much filled the water column in 20-feet of water.  We caught one after another, taking breaks because our hands were cold.  John had a lunch engagement to get to, so he took off sometime around noon.  I stuck it out.  I got a flag not too long after he left.  Unfortunately, I was out of practice and screwed things up.  The line was running steadily off of the spool when I got to the hole.  I grabbed the line, set the hook, and then let it slip out of my hands.  Son-of-a-mother!  The fish was still there when I picked it back up.  It felt heavy and was making some nice runs.  It eventually made a run straight at me.  I tried to keep up, but couldn't.  When I was able to take up the slack, I felt the weight of the fish one more time and then the hook popped out.  That'll make any fisherman crazy, and I did go crazy for about 3 seconds before remembering that I was surrounded by houses with big bay windows facing the lake.  I was so bothered by it that I decided to take the next day off of work and go back out.

It turned out to be kind of a crazy day to be on the ice.  It rained sideways all day long with big wind gusts.  My rain gear held up to it, so I stayed warm and comfortable.  I caught quite a few panfish throughout the course of the day, but they were a little skiddish.  I couldn't get more than 2 or 3 out of one hole before they shut down and quit biting.  I was moving all day.  The flags stayed down until an hour or 2 before dark.  I caught a pike in the mid 20's, and then caught a second pike that same size on the same tip-up.

Hayden has been asking about going ice skating ever since she skated with her cousins and aunts and uncles the Christmas before last.  Luke has started to show some interest, as well.  Thinking that it would be great for them to have something to do on the ice while I fish, I decided to pick up some used skates for them.  We made plans to head back to the lake on Saturday.  John and his youngest daughter, and Josh and the boys were going to come along.  My boys were so excited about it that they got up at 4:30 in the morning.  I heard Hayden a little while later, so I went ahead and dragged out of bed.  It was impossible to keep them quiet while we got ready.  The anticipation of the fun day ahead had them bouncing around, talking way too loud, and making all kinds of noise.  Lincoln even disappeared once and I found him crawling into bed with his mother.  I kept waiting for Michelle to come out and snap at us, but she later said that she never heard a thing.

With the kids all bundled up, we headed up 131 in a snow storm.  We saw a few cars in the ditch.  Conditions weren't exactly ideal for taking kids out on a frozen lake.  The snow was coming down in mounds, and like the rain had been, it was coming in sideways with huge wind gusts.  Josh came with skates instead of ice fishing gear, so he shoveled the rink and skated with the kids.  They all had the time of their lives.  Lincoln wasn't too interested in the skating yet, so he tagged along with me.  It took forever to get my tip-ups set.  Between getting the kids' skates on, keeping Lincoln happy, and frantically getting the minnows back in water after he tripped over them, I just couldn't get even 5 uninterrupted minutes.  John and his daughter had put a few perch on the ice, but she got cold and he graciously decided that they'd better take off.  The skaters decided to head out at about the same time.  I think that the weather was just too rough.  Josh and Keri let Hayden and Luke come over for the afternoon and Grandma Ike came down and asked Licoln to come inside with her and Grandpa.  I found myself alone on the ice with a lot of fishing ahead of me.

Luckily, the wind settled just a little bit and the snow moved on.  I caught a couple of keeper size bass not too long after everyone left.  The biggest was probably about 16-inches.  No more flags would pop for the rest of the day.  I dinked around with the panfish until almost dark and decided I'd better head home.  As I picked up my tip-ups, I was finding that some of the flags were frozen to the ice.  I wondered if any of them had a fish on, but just weren't able to pop up.  Sure enough, I saw the spindle turn just a little bit as I approached one.  I picked it up and set the hook on a pretty heavy fish.  It didn't make too many runs and more or less came right in.  It was a 35-inch pike.  I wonder how long he had been on there.  I was lucky that he was just hooked in the corner of his mouth.  I got my picture and released him healthy.

The warm trend has continued and I knew that it would never hold out for the next weekend, so I took a couple of days off to go while I still could.  When I got out there, I found that we were down to about 4-inches with a lot of water on the ice.  I still felt pretty safe.  After dropping my tip-ups, I started to set up my new shanty.  A flag popped on the tip-up that wasn't 15 yards away.  When I looked into the hole to see if the spool was spinning, I found a 30-inch pike practically staring back at me.  He was right under the ice.  He apparently wasn't worried about all the noise I had been making with the shanty or the clicking of my spikes on the smooth ice.  I grabbed the line and pulled the minnow back up near him.  I then backed up a little so that he couldn't see me.  He hung around for quite awhile, but never bothered with the minnow again.  He seemed to be in a pretty neutral mood and had just nipped at the minnow out of habit.  Makes me wonder how many false flags really were pike.  I got one more flag later in the day.  It was making some good runs and I was pretty sure that it was a pike.  Turned out to be a 23-inch bass.  It was barely hooked.  Not a 40-inch pike, but you can't complain about a bass that big.

I was a little more nervous heading to the ice on day two because I knew how warm it had been the day before.  Luckily, it had been below freezing at night and the ice seemed pretty solid from top to bottom.  I was down to between 3 and 3 1/2 inches.  It was definitely creepy and I walked slowly and deliberately all day.  I stepped light and kept my ears perked for any cracking sounds.  The perch weren't doing much, but I found the gills and caught plenty of them.  I was getting more nervous as the day went on, especially after the sun came out and it started feeling warmer.  The top of the ice started turning a little slushy, which meant that it was now added weight instead of support. 

A flag finally went up at about 2:00.  With the hair standing on the back of my neck, I stepped cautiously across the deep water to get to the tip-up.  When I got there, the line was just flying off of the spool.  I hurried to get my hands on it for fear that it would take all of the line.  I set the hook immediately and found a pretty nice fish on the other end of the line.  After it had made its runs, I pulled it through the paper thin hole.  Another 35-incher.  Almost worth the risk. 

After the picture and release, I decided that I'd better get off of the deep water before I ended up regretting it.  I messed around trying to catch panfish over 4 feet of water for a couple of hours.  Not too many pannies that shallow.  I got one more flag.  The fish had run out quite a bit of line, but was gone by the time that I made it there after skirting around the edge of the lake.  With the sun no longer beating down on the ice, I snuck back out to my gill hole.  I caught 10 or 15 nice ones before deciding that I had pushed my luck long enough.  Picking up my tip-ups in the dark wasn't real fun.  I felt some relief when I finally dropped my last one into the bucket and got ready to take the short walk back to land.  My relief was a bit premature.  I went through about 6 feet from shore.  I only went in to my knees and my waterproof boots and pants kept me pretty dry.  My sled almost went in with all of my stuff in it, but I grabbed it in time. 

I guess I'm going to have to be done until we get back up to at least 4-inches.  There's no guarantee that we will, but I sure hope we do.  I feel like I'm just getting started.  Still waiting to pull that 45-incher through the ice.
   

Old Rickety Back

Another season ended a little early as a result of my back going out on me.  I was close to calling it quits, anyway.  We had a pretty good second half to our 2011 season on the Grand.  The kids came out a few more times and Mort was finally able to hit the water with us.  The cats were pretty cooperative from August on.

My favorite trip since my last entry was probably an evening when Mort, Lincoln and I went out.  We covered close to 4 miles of river.  Lincoln was hauling in the suckers and other worm biters.  He gave old Mort a pretty good chuckle when he said, "Watch and learn, Grandpa" every time he pulled one in.  He gave him another chuckle when he insisted that he had to poop and then only popped out a tiny tootsie-roll after I got him all set up on a bucket.  We struggled to find the cats for a little bit that night, but the channels eventually showed up.  After dark we parked at the head of the hole just down from the launch.  We caught several fish, including one decent flattie.  I got to play guide, setting the hook and then quickly handing the rod over.  Lincoln wanted his grandpa to tell him story after story.  10:30 rolled around and I suggested that we head in.  Neither of them wanted to.  Might be the first time ever that I was outlasted on the river.  My early end to the season left Mort wanting more.  We're both eagerly anticipating the spring run of channels down by the bayous.

I spent one rainy Sunday with the boys down river by Indian Channel.  We brought crawlers and frozen cut sucker in hopes that we'd get into some fall channels.  Didn't really happen.  The rods with the cut bait danced constantly.  Just little jiggles.  Switching to a worm and a small hook revealed that the bottom was just crawling with tiny channels.  It worked out well for the boys.  They got to reel in fish after fish.  When they grew tired of it, we decided to try drifting for walleye.  We stumbled across one.  Luke was worried about getting poked and I could barely get him to hold it for a picture.  Ended up yelling at him a little bit.  I got a pouty picture for my effort.  We also snuck a decent bass into the boat on a drift.  It was pretty apparent that the boys were pretty done with fishing by this time of the year.  They were loud, silly, and almost constantly arguing with each other.  I about lost my mind out there.  The good thing about fishing is that Luke will only bring away from all of this the ability to brag to people that he has caught his first walleye.

I also got out by myself a fair share.  The flatheads started coming into the boat pretty regularly in August and September.  They just about exclusively came on sucker heads.  Live bait was completely useless, especially in September.  Other pieces of cut bait always seemed to get snubbed in favor of the head.  Hard to make any sense of it, but I'm glad I made this discovery.  One final thought about fall fishing that I've always liked.  It obviously gets dark a lot earlier.  The flatheads get aggressive for an hour or two right around dusk.  You can really pinpoint your attack and then head for home before you would normally even be starting on a mid-summer outing.  It's a nice first step towards getting back to something a little closer to normal sleep.

I thought that I had my CPR photography down to a pretty flawless science.  I ran into a new problem in that I just couldn't keep the fog off of the lense.  You can barely see the biggest fish of the year because of a blurry lense.  I didn't discover the problem until after I had released the big girl.  Even after I accounted for the fog and started wiping the lense just before my pictures, I still had issues.  I think that there's some kind of anti-fog spray that I can get for this.  What a pain!

Right now I'm sitting smack in the middle of that lull between the river and ice fishing.  I've already pulled out a couple of my ice fishing DVD's.  I'm very much looking forward to seeing that first flag pop.  I do have to prepare for the fact that I won't be getting out as much this winter.  The wife and I are trying to account for the tough financial times and cut down on cost any way possible.  Extra gas money and minnows can be pretty hard to add to the budget when you've already cut things like cable and about 10 degrees off your heat.  I'll just have to make the times that I do go count.  Maybe she'll let me keep going if I can turn each trip into a meal or two.  As my old buddy John used to say, I'm always thinking.