September 24, 2009 -- On Leech Lake

Today was yet another in a series of beautiful Fall days on Leech Lake. The temperature today hit a high of 73 degrees, the sky was clear blue with only some distant clouds to the south. The wind was calm to maybe 3-5 mph out of the south. An absolutely gorgeous September day.

Today is also the last full day of my parents' visit to the Northwoods. Tomorrow they will begin their two-day trip back to Illinois. It's been great having them here, and as usual, their trip went by way too quickly.

This afternoon Duane Paulsen was back in the woods cutting up a couple of fallen trees on John Newman's property. I don't know why, but I had a feeling I needed to go back and check on him. On got on my Polaris Sportsman 500 ATV and went back to where the logging operation was underway.

Sure enough, Duane had managed to get the bar of his chain saw stuck in a large tree trunk and needed assistance freeing it. While Duane used the front loader of his tractor to lift the tree trunk, I grabbed the chain saw and managed to wiggle it free.

At that point Duane said he’d had enough logging for one day and decided to head home. We loaded his front loader with numerous cuts from the tree, and he took them home where he’d split them into firewood later.

At that point my Mom and I decided to go for a walk in the woods. There are many trails that crisscross the woods and while we didn’t take the shortest route, we didn’t go the longest way either. We had a nice walk, and talk, back in the woods.

When we returned it was around 3:00 p.m. The sky was still clear blue and the wind was slight at 3-5 mph. I thought it’d be the perfect time to get a little fishing in. I asked them, but neither my Mom nor my Dad wanted to join me on the water.

While I was helping Duane in the woods, he had mentioned that earlier that morning he’d caught a nice walleye, a northern and numerous good perch in a spot between Schiebe’s cabin and the government cabins in 8-10 feet of water. It had been years since I had fished that spot so I thought that I’d try there.

The water temperature where I stopped to fish was 70.2 degrees. I put a fathead minnow on my Lindy Max Gap jig and lowered it into the water. I caught numerous perch over the next hour, but none that I would classify as “really nice,” or jumbo.

I decided to mix up my presentation slightly, so rather than tip my jig with a minnow I used a Northland Pro Series Swim’N Grub in a silver color. On my first cast I caught a 24” northern pike. After that I caught a couple of small perch, but again, no walleye or jumbo perch.

At 4:30 p.m. I headed back to shore to get the grill going for dinner. The previous day I had started brining a chicken, and tonight I was going to make “beer can” chicken on the grill.

I thought the bird was tender, juicy and very tasty, but it might have been too salty for my parents taste.

After dinner I started doing some work on my Dad’s laptop PC; things like cleaning up the registry, changing the virus protection software on the PC, etc. I finally wrapped up the work shortly after midnight and then hit the hay.

It was nice to have my parents here for a visit at Leech Lake, and I hope they can come up here again during my next visit.

Tomorrow is supposed to be another nice day – with warm temperatures, light winds and clear skies. I plan to get out onto Leech Lake to do some Fall walleye fishing.