Still In The Shop

First mole of the year!

I am beginning to believe that my boat loves my dealer Frankie more than it loves me.  Of course there is a probable good reason for this, in my possession it takes it's own fate in my hands yet at Frankie's, it gets the tender loving care it really needs!  If I look at the total time it has been in the shop between May 20, 2019 to May 20, 2020, it was over 6 months!  Of course there is no one to blame except me so that leaves me tip toeing around my fishing adventures.  Of course add the current Covid situation in there and I should be on Lac Seul right now on my second trip of the year.  In the meantime I simply sit around and try to get things done.  So rather than sitting around and feeling bad about the boat not being in my possession therefore not being able to fish Devils Lake this weekend with Kevin and Ben, there were a couple of interesting moments to share.  The first is last Thursday Bruce Wiley called me to ask if I wanted to have lunch.  About 50% of the time lunch means more than just meeting him at a restaurant rather meeting him at his hanger and we fly somewhere for lunch.  The first option was Hanger 54 in the Eau Claire Airport, a quick call stated they were still closed.  Plan B was fly to Voyager Village, southwest of Danbury, Wisconsin, a large development with a golf course, clubhouse, runway, that is secluded in the middle of the woods/lake area.  A quick 35 minute flight in Bruce's Cessna 182 RG (Retractable Gear), as we approached Siren Wisconsin I saw a runway and asked about it, "nope, you need to be right on top of this one to see it" and of course he was right.  We landed basically on the golf course, hoping the guys teeing off to our right wouldn't slice one as we touched down.  Luckily we were good as we taxied our way to the plane parking area, threw $20 in the runway donation box and walked to the clubhouse and had a magnificent lunch, quite an operation.  Sat next to some retired business guys from the St. Paul area and had a good discussion of the current situations.  As we took off I was looking for my phone to take some pictures, no phone!!!  Damn, did it fall out of my pocket, did I leave it on the table....I seem to be getting worse at just set it it down and forgetting.  Well, not remembering that it was used, the last time was at the hanger, it must be there.  We landed back at Crystal Airport and made our way back to the hanger, Bruce exclaimed, "Is that your phone on the Taxi way?  Uffda it was, apparently falling out of my pocket when I entered the plane 3 hours earlier.......it was still there!  Undamaged somehow there has to be a better way of my hanging onto my phone!  So no pictures of the trip but I have been working hard on trapping a mole that is making tunnels in the yard.  These creatures are difficult to trap and finally getting one, I figured I solved that problem yet the tunnel was remade the following day.  Hopefully success will find me again, but it is a challenge for sure!

Jared's 28 inch Walleye in the Trees

At this time I am expecting a call to pick up the boat either today or tomorrow.  The river is down so I have been trying to get the jon boat ready for the river.  The contingency plan is to fish off the dock of my friend John Meyer, down the street.  He has been great to allow some of us to simply drive down and fish off his dock for catfish, carp, suckers, walleye, and whatever feels like biting.  In the meantime Ben Aiona has been texting me pictures of their success on Devils Lake, North Dakota.  His son Jared is quite a fisherman and does not hesitate to get right in the action.  Apparently they arrived last Tuesday afternoon, went out and caught over 116 stripped bass in a few hours.  That is a lot of fun.  Here is a picture of Jared's 28 inch walleye caught on a leech and bobber in the trees, you can see them sticking out of the water. Ben was having some difficulties with his HDS 12 Gen 3 however it was resolved and he didn't need mine.  With 2 trips to Lac Seul cancelled, Bruce was talking about going somewhere, Ben suggested Devil's Lake as he would be happy to guide us!  that might be a great idea and we are kicking it around.  In the meantime my garden is coming along well.  Today it will be in the 90's and everything will be growing like crazy, including the weeds!  The asparagus is doing well, and we decided to try and freeze some rhubarb this year and it went pretty well.  After picking and washing, it was cut up into cubes and put in a shallow aluminum pan, then put in the freezer for 30 minutes or so.  Frozen solid, then we vacuum packed it, 4 cups to the pouch and voila, we'll have to see how it turns out in a few months.  It looks pretty good though. 

My goal for this week is pretty simple, get my Ranger back, clean out the jon boat, the annual fishing garage sale that is held in Champlin every year has been moved to Buffalo, MN this year so on Thursday morning I hope to be there as they have some pretty sweet deals.  Hopefully it all ends with a trip to Mille Lacs to fish the flats for walleye before it closes on July 1st, which is a whole new story in itself. 

Nothing's working!

Ben with 2 nice crappies

Fairly unbelievable however this is the best time of the year to be out fishing and I have been relegated to sitting looking at my boat, watching it rain.  Sunday was my day to head to Mille Lacs and fish with my friend Bill Lundeen.  Fishing on Mille Lacs has been phenomenal, or so they say as you definitely couldn't prove it by me.  Even though you legally cannot keep a walleye on Mille Lacs, the bite is reported to be very good as there are few boats on the lake.  This should be Bill's peak time at the bait shop however with few people coming to the lake to fish and the fact that you can't even keep one fish has really put a damper on needing to be at the store 100% of the time as his wife, Kathy can handle it for a few hours.   Our plans were made mid last week and I worked hard to put my boat back together, unfortunately on Friday my mother went back into the hospital so Sunday's plan was abandoned as my wife and I decided to drive to Eau Claire and see how well she was doing. So, no fishing last weekend but my buddy Kevin and his son Ben did call me as they went to Devil's Lake, North Dakota and I am anxiously waiting a report. Thank God somebody is thinking as I always like to have some pictures for the posts and pictures I got, first of my neighbor Brandon and the 14 inch Crappie he caught at his lake while trolling a rapala for walleyes then this one of Ben Taylor holding to nice crappies that him and his dad got at their lake, west of Mille Lacs.  Unfortunately the good crappie bite is close to being done but we might be able to find a few before the 4th of July, we will have to see.  We have one of our employees, Chad from China here in Minneapolis and the plan is to take him to Mille Lacs with my neighbor Lory and see if we can't get some nice walleyes.  I have taken our visitors to the big pond before and they always tend to be somewhat intimidated by the big water but we have caught some nice fish and here's hoping we give Chad an experience that he could never have in China.  I am sure he will be amaze at the water clarity, freedom to go anywhere on the lake, and just the simple overwhelming size of the lake as there are not many large lakes in China.

Brandon's 14 inch crappie!

So I mentioned earlier the fact that I got the boat together.  Well I didn't do too much stuff to it yet
there were some things that drove me nuts so I fixed them. First was to complete the installation of  a remote plug in for my Sonic Hub USB connections.  Because my Sonic Hub is tucked way under my dash it is all but impossible to plug in a auxiliary source into the USB ports.  Therefore I bought a dual USB socket that mounts into a panel, then plugs into the USB ports on the Sonic Hub.  I am pretty impressed as both ports work and the installation makes everything very clean for sure. The second thing I did was to put a similar panel mount socket that has 2 USB plugins but is a fast charge port for a cell phone.  I don't like those standard cigarette lighter socket plug ins as the plug in chargers tend to fall out.  With the new plug in situation I now have a secure place to plug in my phone to charge it and it is certified as a "fast charge" technology and can really recover a discharged phone quickly.  Also it is almost impossible for the plug in cable to become dislodged, which is very nice.  I also got a few types of charging cables in case my guests need a cell phone charged and because my Sonic Hub has bluetooth, I can run my phone as an audio source and be able to safely power it so the battery doesn't drain.  The third thing I got done was to finish installing my RAM trolling motor stabilizer.  After returning from Canada last month I noticed that my bow mounted trolling motor head was hitting against the gunnel of my boat.  the only way to secure this was to physically secure it without letting it travel to the boat.  I ordered on and mounted it, SWEET is all I can say.  I have a few more things to do to the boat this season, most are small cosmetic or ...Geez, it would be nice to have..........stuff.
I put my 22" pitch prop back on for this spring based on the performance of my motor last fall, after what I figured was a breakin period.  Although it does give better mileage I am probably going back to my 20" prop to get the RPM's back up to where they should be.  I wish they made a 21" prop!!!  I am still working on getting my Structure Scan 3D hooked up to see how that works.


Mom is doing OK but at her age it's going to be time to start making some life changing decisions on where she should live, how much assistance she needs, all that fun stuff.  The sad part is that I'm not that far behind her!  We did have our 14th annual ENA Golf Tourney last Friday and it looks like we will have another successful fund raiser.  In the mean time we are starting to discuss the location of our annual Jul fishing trip which the last few years has been at Lake Oahe in South Dakota.  I have been lobbying for either Upper Red Lake (Where we ice fish) or Devil's Lake, North Dakota.  Lake of the Woods has been kicked around but that might put some pressure on the boat situation because that is such big water.  I am sure we'll end up figuring something out!