June 19, 2009 -- At Leech Lake

An approaching storm on the south end of Sucker Bay

All of my work filling in the cracks in our asphalt driveway was washed away with the torrential rains we had last night. Since there is a very good chance of more thunderstorms later tonight, I'm going to wait until Saturday to refill the cracks -- and battle the humongous mosquitoes.

The temperature at noon today is 68 degrees, the wind is light at 5-8 mph out of the SW and the sky is gray and overcast. It looks as if it might rain, and there is indeed rain in the forecast.

Noel Hancock stopped by this morning for coffee and we had a nice visit. He's a great guy and a good neighbor. And speaking of good neighbors, Tom Malay and I are going to go fishing here in about a half an hour.

Tom and I first fished in front of our house in 10-12 feet of water. The water temperature today has warmed 67.5 degrees. With the slight SW wind, we drifted toward Tom's house. We caught a few perch, but no jumbos. I caught a small 12" walleye. After a couple of passes we decided to relocate to a spot Tom knows between Duck and Second Duck Points.

We motored there at 30 mph, and apparently my motor is back to working properly. Upon arriving at the designated spot we baited our jigs with shiners and dropped them into 8.5 feet of water. Again, the SW wind pushed us north, this time toward Second Duck Point. We caught a few perch but no walleye.

We repositioned ourselves yet again in 10 feet of water off Second Duck Point. As was the order of the day, we caught nothing but small perch.

Finally, we went back to where we started, in front of my house, for a couple last drifts. We caught a few more perch, but still no walleye. We decided to head home when we finally used up the last of our shiners. I dropped Tom off on the end of his dock and came home myself.

I did a quick pass around the cabin property to check on the evergreen trees and lilac bushes I planted week or two ago. I couldn't believe how much new growth there was on the Colorado spruce trees. The lilacs looked healthy and strong too. I guess all of this rain the past week has really helped them establish a foot hold. I hope they do well throughout the summer and live to be big, strong trees and bushes.

At 8:00 p.m., the wind picked up to about 10 mph out of the west and it looked as if a storm that had been off in the distance was rapidly heading my way. But as time passed, so did the storm. The primary force of the storm passed to the south and east of Sucker Bay, but we did get a tiny bit of rain from the trailing edge of the storm. The sky is now clear at 9:00 p.m., and I think I'll go out trolling.

I got out onto the lake about a quarter past 9:00 p.m. Once on the lake I could see another storm front approaching from the south, but this one looked to be even further east than the one that preceded it so I figured it would miss Sucker Bay. The wind was out of the west at 8 mph, the air temperature was 70 degrees and the water temperature had warmed again to 68.7 degrees. As the evening wore on, the storm did move to the east and missed Sucker Bay.

I started trolling The Alley in 10 feet of water, and on my first pass, right in front of our house, I caught a 15” walleye. The fish was too small for me to keep for a meal (I will only keep fish between 16” and 17 1/2”) so I put it back into the lake.

During the next hour I watched the western sky turn from a brilliant orange to a pale cantaloupe color to finally a burnt sienna. Above the orange band was a very faint yellow streak and above it pale green line that quickly turned into a light blue. Above the light blue was bright blue band and finally a deep indigo, almost purple color, up above. I was struck by how easily I could make out every color in the rainbow. Another beautiful sunset over Leech Lake

Just as the stars were starting to show themselves in the fading light, the last of the five other boats sharing this section of Sucker Bay with me headed for home; leaving my boat as the only one in sight.

I decided to make one last past through The Alley and made a large arcing turn off Second Duck Point. About half way through my turn I felt a large pull on my line and immediately I set the hook. I could tell this fish was bigger by the way it pulled back as I reeled it to the boat.

With my St. Croix fishing rod in my right hand, I reached for my Frabill net with my left. I lowered the net into the water and underneath the fish and raised the rod bringing the fish into the net. I scooped up the fish and brought it into the boat. After removing the treble hook from its lip, I did a quick measurement – a beautiful 22” walleye. Like the 15” walleye before it, this one too went back into Leech Lake.

At 11:15 p.m. I put the boat onto the lift and came ashore. As I was walking from the boat lift back to the house I felt the breeze pick up. I think there may be another storm on the way. It would be nice to fall asleep tonight listening to the rain and far away thunder.