My New Fishing Partner

Jake the Red Horse King!!

It's been a odd summer with continued issues with my boat, which I will get into later.  In the meantime one of my tasks have been working on the jon boat to start fishing the Mississippi River behind the house.  A prerequisite was always to fish the neighbors dock and get a feel for the water flow, clarity, and what's biting.  A week ago or so the result was a nice golden red horse, a medium sized carp as well as a medium catfish.  In the neighbor hood is a guy by what we call him Limo Joe as his past life years ago was driving a limo.  After a number of years he finally settled down and now he has 2 wonderful kids, a boy named Jake and a girl, Kaylee.  The boy is 12 years old and is crazy about fishing so offering to take both of them to the dock we managed to catch a really nice standard red horse sucker and a small catfish.  It wasn't as good as the other day but for Jake it was a fabulous.  Well he had soccer on the next night but on Tuesday he was back at the pole shed ready for more.  We could not use the dock so at first we spent some time practicing casting, but the urge to fish was too great so we called mom and said we were heading down the road to fish the Champlin Mississippi River Point Park.  Our strategy was the same, fish the bottom with a glob of nightcrawlers to see what would bite.  Within 10 minutes Jake had this nice red horse sucker on, the second one he caught that week.  you can obviously tell that he's pretty happy with his catch.  Admittedly it's as much fun for me as it was for him.  In my younger days we often fished with my dad's friends Art Kelly, Danny Van Pelt, and Vic Wenaas, down at the Buffalo River fishing catfish in August. Getting to show him how to set the hook, hold the rod, use it for leverage, is fun and Jake actually listens!  Having no children of my own, Jake is like a grandson I will never have so it's quite the honor to be able to pass on some of my fishing knowledge to a younger person.  It's also makes me smile when I see his enthusiasm, like I had when I was that age.....let see, 52 years ago......uffda.  Jake can't wait to get out again but this time we will launch at the other neighbors landing and fish out of the boat, telling Jake we will get bigger fish from the boat! I am not sure who's more excited, Jake or me!

Nice carp!!

So the Ranger, well it looks like it will be in the shop for at least another 2 weeks as investigating the cracks, Frankie's guy found additional damage from my lower unit hit back in May on Lac Seul.  It has been assured it's repairable however I had to call the insurance company, they will need to remove both the main motor and kicker, not an easy task.  Hopefully it will be done by Labor day but who knows???  Not complaining and thankfully August is the time to fish on the River for smallies and rough fish, they are fun to catch.  With access to the river so close it just takes hooking the jon boat up to the ATV, opening (and making sure they are closed again!) the gates and launching, 10 minutes and we are on the water.  The smallmouth bass action using crankbaits is good so not having the Ranger isn't the end of the world however hopefully this is the end of the 2019 hitting a rock nightmare!  My goal is to teach Jake how to use a bait-caster before the season ends.  Admittedly this retirement is an interesting transition.  The biggest accomplishment so far has been the garden and making pickles.  One of my batches is fermentation pickles, similar to Clausen type pickles.  They are stacked in a fermentation crock, layers of dill, garlic, spices, cucumbers (the larger ones) then repeat with an added couple of grape leaves to add natural tanins to help keep them crisp.  In a 3.5 gallon fermentation crock it is filled about 3/4 of the way then a brine mixture of 1/3 cup of pickling salt to a gallon of water, fill the crock then put the weights in to keep the cucumbers under the brine, and let them naturally ferment.  it has a lid with a water lip to keep out any bad yeasts and stuff.  They are looking pretty good and hopefully will be done by the middle of next week.  Just in time for another batch.