July 24, 2009 -- At Leech Lake

5 Days and Counting...

We awoke this morning to very strong winds of 15-25 mph out of the WNW. The lake was churning and covered in white caps. The sky was mostly sunny, the temperature was 68 degrees (although it felt much cooler than that because of the wind), and the water temperature was 70.2 degrees.

Liz and Ashley spent most of the late-morning and early-afternoon packing and getting ready for the drive down to St. Cloud. Ashley was able to take a break from her work to go on an ATV ride with me. I took her to the south end of Ottertail Peninsula.

At 3:45 p.m., Liz and Ashley, along with Sandy and Jackson, left Leech Lake to drive to St. Cloud. Later tonight Liz and Ashley will go to Minneapolis with Kathleen's sister Mary where they will spend the night. Then tomorrow, Ashley leaves for California. Liz will go back to St. Cloud where she will stay with her grandma for another week.

After everyone left I contacted Tom Malay. Earlier in the day he had gone into Cass Lake and picked up one of the bake-at-home pizzas for me. He stopped by to drop it off and when he did, I invited him in for a beer. We sat out on the back deck and shared a cold one.

When Tom went home I decided to go fishing for a little while before it got dark. Usually I go out trolling at night, but I heard that the wind -- which had died down to about 10 mph out of the west at 5:30 p.m. -- was supposed to pick up again around 9:30 p.m.

I motored out to 14 feet of water in front of the cabin, put a leech on my jig and began fishing. I made a couple of drifts toward shore, but caught only one fish, a bluegill. Oddly enough, it was the first bluegill I've caught all summer long (of course, they haven't been one of the fish I've targeted either).

As predicted, at just before 10:00 p.m. this evening the wind began to pick up and is currently blowing very hard out of the west. It is not a night I'd want to be out trolling for walleye on Leech Lake.

[NOTE: I will not be posting any new pictures to this blog during my current stay. In her haste, Liz packed the USB cord for my camera in her things and took it with her. I probably won't get it from her until we're both back in California.]