July 31, 2012 -- On Leech Lake

How in the world can this be the last day in July? It seemed like just yesterday it was early June and I was picking up Kathleen at the airport for the start of her wonderful, spectacular visit to Leech Lake. Now it's the end of July. Wow.

Well, the weather certainly felt like a day in late July. The temperature at 8:30 a.m. this morning was already 75 degrees, the wind was light at 8-10 mph out of the WSW and the humidity was on the rise. The sky was mostly sunny with just a few high clouds.

As the day progressed the humidity went up as did the heat. By late afternoon the temperature was in the high 80s and the humidity was at least 75%. The wind remained fairly steady at 8-12 mph out of the SW.

Around 3:30 p.m. John Newman made his way over to my boat lift in preparation for a couple of hours on the water. Our plan was to pull spinner rigs with nightcrawlers for walleye and if that didn't work switch to jigging with leeches, fatheads and artificial bait.

I motored the Lund IFS 1850 Pro south past Second Duck Point, deployed my 8-hp Honda, 4-stroke kicker motor and John and I then started pulling spinners. John was using a bullet weight in front of a spinner of purple beads and blades while I used an in-line keel weight pulling a chartreuse crawler harness/spinner rig. I kept the boat moving  at 1.3 to 1.7 mph which was sufficient to keep the spinners over the weeds. I took us up Sucker Bay to Schiebe's cabin, but other than a few small perch bites neither John nor I caught a walleye or jumbo perch.

As planned, we switched up tactics and to jigging while drifting. Again I motored us past Second Duck Point in 12 feet of water -- which was 80.7 degrees -- where we deployed the drift sock and dropped our jigs in the water. I tipped my jig with a leech while John opted for a fathead. We caught a few small perch but no jumbos or walleyes.

The wind had died down to just a breeze so we pulled in the drift sock to keep the boat moving at .45 mph ground speed. But our attempts to keep moving were to no avail and we caught nothing more than small perch. So at 6:00 p.m. we decided to give up and come ashore.

I spent the rest of the night listening to music, reading, talking to Kathleen and the kids on the phone before heading off to bed. A week from today, August 7, my son Joe arrives in MN. I look forward to seeing him.

Good night from Leech Lake.