Journal of a Minnesota Angler

The weekend after my outing with Greg, MNAngler, Jr. and I went with my dad to his cabin in Northwest Wisconsin. We left Saturday morning and came back Sunday afternoon, but managed to catch some decent fish in that short time span.

After settling in and playing around a bit with archery and pellet guns, the three of us took my dad’s canoe out. We were out for about an hour before MNAngler, Jr. got bored. It was sunny, but a bit windy and the only action we had was a nice largemouth that hit my dad’s floating joint-body Rapala. Unfortunately, he lost it just as he was trying to boat it.

We had about an hour before we were going to get ready for dinner so I decided to cast off the dock until it was time. My dad’s lake has a lot of weeds and jigs tend to get caught up pretty easily. I was wary of throwing a wacky worm because of the exposed hook, but since I had had a lot of success with it lately, decided to give it a go anyway. To my surprise, it didn’t hook many weeds at all. And the endeavor paid off because one of the casts near some lily pads got heavy on the lift and I jerked up instinctively to catch this guy at 14 1/2 inches:

My dad doesn’t fish much any more, so he was excited to have a fish for a meal. We put it on the stringer and since we already had some large, yummy steaks for dinner, decided to clean him later.

Two hours later, I was the only one interested in heading out again, so I headed down to the dock. I grabbed the stringer in case I could add to it and found this at the end of it:

Looks like there was a big something (musky?) patrolling the area and had some dinner himself. I felt bad that my dad now didn’t have a fish for dinner.

I took the canoe out and passed a couple in a nice fishing boat. We said hi and I asked how the fishing was. They said it was ok. Just then, the husband hooked into a fish. “There’s one,” I said. It was a small largemouth bass.

I turned the corner into a little bay and dropped a wacky worm about 20 feet from some lily pads. Bang! First cast and I had a fish on! It was only a 9 1/2 inch largemouth, but fun because it was the first cast. Of course, the couple in the boat didn’t see it. I should have made more noise.

Forty five minutes went by without much action until I dropped a green wacky worm right next to an exposed stump. I felt a few ticks before I set the hook and pulled in this 14 1/2 inch replacement for the musky bait.

Before going in, I got to enjoy this gorgeous sunset:

The next morning, we did a little work chopping wood and MNAngler, Jr. was doing a great job lending a hand.

  

At about 11am, I headed out for another hour or so. I landed another 14″ and 13 1/2″ before it was time for lunch and before packing up to head home.

 

All in all, it wasn’t a bad weekend of fishing. I caught 5 fish while on the water for 5 hours. The average number of fish per hour could have been better, but I won’t argue with the results.