Dog Days of Summer

Flames shoot out the exhaust on an amazing run.

Fishing has been somewhat frustrating considering all the rain we have had in the last 30 days.  I suspect it's been over 12 inches but who is counting!  Friday I was fortunate enough to be invited back to Brainerd International Raceway (BIR) by my good friend Kevin Sonsalla.  Kevin is a business colleague I met a long time ago and he happened to be from the area where I grew up.  There were plenty of Sonsalla's near Eleva so we have a lot in common.  Last week event was the NHRA's (National Hot Rod Association) scheduled event and all the big national teams were there.  Kevin has a relationship with Tony Schaumacher, the championship drag racer who is sponsored by the US Army.  Therefore he has race day passes, passses for the hospitality tent which get's us refreshments and a awfully good meal after the first race.   It is interesting as these top fuel cars run on Nitromethane which has the ability to provide most of the oxygen needed to make power.  These engines are 500 cubic inch and have no cooling other than air, so after each run they are torn apart and rebuilt for the next race.  In this case the top fuel guys raced at around 5:00 in the afternoon and have to have their cars ready for the next run, 2 hours later.  It is quite fun to watch a crew of 4 guys rebuild the engine, pretty amazing.  These cars start from a dead stop and race just 1000 feet to the finish.  It used to be a quarter mile length however the speeds were getting too high so they shortened it.  The teams now have caught back up to the speeds and times of the old distance and the fastest run was covering the distance in 3.77 seconds with a top speed of 322 mph.  That's moving!  Sitting in the stands you literally feel the force of these engines as they scream by.  It is pretty loud as well.  We stayed for the second run later in the evening and the flames shooting out of the exhaust is pretty cool.  The last race of the day was a couple of jet engine powered cars and that was interesting.  Not as fast or as quick never the less the afterburners on the engines put on a pretty good show.

Current water Levels behind the house.

I did make it on the river on Sunday night however because of the rain the water was up another 18 inches.  The high water makes for traveling anywhere you want to go pretty easy however it does scatter the fish.  My neighbor Tom Olson went with me but it was pretty slow.  He caught a medium sized smallmouth while I haven't been doing very well at all in that department.  At 7:00 we decided to anchor and again all we could catch were 6 inch catfish in the high water.   Oh well, hopefully the rain will settle down somewhat. Personally I like it when the gage height is between 4.0 and 5.0.  Unfortunately both seats in my Jon Boat broke so I ordered new ones to replace them. They were pretty bad.  I have one other project going on with my boat, on the Ranger I have an HDS 9 mounted on the dash above my panel mount HDS12.  My original idea was to use a Johnny Ray so I could move it between my Ranger and the Jon boat however it proved to be too heavy for the Johnny Ray that I bought.  After a few ideas am going to try to mount just an HDS9 gimble to my dash using a nice 1/2" thick plastic piece then fashion it into an adaptor plate so I use the existing holes that I have already made.  Luckily the Johnny Ray still works good in the jon boat so I should be ok, it just takes a little thought process to make sure it looks good.

After a season of strictly catch and release fishing on Mille Lacs this year, the calculations for hooking mortality have now exceeded the allowable totals on the State fisherman's side.  Our illustrious Governor announce that we would not stop fishing but the Indian tribes called foul so starting September 6th it will be illegal to fish for walleyes again until a new quota is announced for December 1st...........what an unbelievable mess for sure.  I promised myself I won't get political but this whole situation on Mille Lacs is ridiculous for sure.  Anyway I am hoping to get out this weekend for one last trip for what it's worth, maybe try some deep water trolling with lead line or deep diving reef runners.  It's always fun and the MTT event on Mille Lacs, that strategy proved to be very successful.