Charlie's Day

As happens every year my good friend Chuck Teasley shows up for a day of fishing on Mille Lacs.  A break from a week long family event, our trip to the pond gives Charlie a chance to catch up with his friends back in Minnesota.  One of the things that I look forward to is seeing Dan Hoene, an old friend of Chuck's from Duluth.  Dan skated on the University of Michigan's varsity hockey team and has a lot of interesting stories in the boat.  Last year he was fishing Eagle Lake, Ontario and did not make our trip.  This year Dan was able to join us for our annual outing and we took full advantage of him (what are friends for anyway?).   Our trip starts out the night before, gathering at the pole shed and loading up.  We like to head up early, catch dinner at the lake, staying in a hotel, assuring an early start in the morning. Like last year we again stayed in my friend Mark's ice house.  More like a small cabin, Dan was skeptical.  Although I assured Dan that the ice house had air conditioning, he had his doubts as a room at Eddy's sounded a whole lot better.  Upon arrival we heard no complaints.  Chuck and I have many things in common including open heart surgery.  After last years fishing trip he returned home meeting his cardiologist the next week only to be told he was not leaving and scheduled a quintuple bypass surgery immediately.  Our scars are quite visible and we used them to our utmost advantage.  It took little to convince Dan that both of us had 10 pound lifting restrictions as a result of our surgery and we needed his help.  For the next 24 hours we never had to lift anything as our good friend did all the work from carrying coolers to tackle boxes to unloading everything.  We were going to eventually tell him but it was so nice not having to do anything and watching him be such a sweetheart was touching!  In the end he left before we could fess up so if you read this Dan there are 2 things, thanks for being such a good sport and don't even think about missing next year.   The first picture from left to right is Dan, Myself, and Charlie.

After having breakfast in Isle, MN we headed to the landing north of the casino.  The wind was out of the west north west and being on the west side of the lake would prove to be more comfortable.  Meeting us on the lake would be a friend of Chuck's he met in St. Louis,  Mark Setterstrom.  Charlie is a Infant Swimming Resource instructor teaching children as young as 6 months how to survive an  accidental fall into water, such as a pool.  He had taught his children as Mark is a player for the St. Louis Rams football team.  Fishing was painfully slow as we drifted Seguchie Flat.  A mistake on my part, I had forgot to put in additional gas in my boat.  With a strategy of trolling all day, I did not want to take a chance and had to go in to get some petro.  We decided to put Chuck in Mark's boat before we finished our drift, then go in.  I had a few extra trolling rods and suggested to Mark they try off the flat using a rainbow trout colored Reef Runner with 150 feet of line out.  Away they went as we finished the drift.  5 minutes later we drove by as we headed to shore only to see them acknowledge a released 26.5 walleye after 3 minutes of trolling.  I looked like a genius.  As happens, this omen was short lived and was the only nice fish caught between us.  We actually snagged an 18 incher later in the day but this was it!  Here is Mark's nice fish.  We still had fun fishing as there was a whole year to catch up on things.  I had the pleasure of meeting Mark and maybe one day can fish with him again.  We finished off with dinner at Chico's, double taco night, 6 for the price of 3.  Who can beat that!  A special thanks to Mark Applen for the use of his ice house. 

I did get out Sunday as my neighbor Tom and I hit the river for smallies.  He has some pictures I am waiting for as my camera was dead on arrival.  Hopefully I can post later this week as we did very well.