July 8, 2011 -- On Leech Lake

At 9:30 a.m. it was a comfortable 68 degrees, the wind was light at 5-8 mph out of the NNW and the sky was mostly sunny with just some high, hazy clouds.

As is typically here on the shores of Leech Lake there was a full orchestra of birds singing this morning. I have not yet been able to identify all of the birds' individual songs, but I do recognize the oriole and the kingfisher, both of which were singing brightly this morning.

It is odd knowing that Kathleen is in Minnesota, but not here with me at the lake. She is in St. Cloud visiting her mother, and will driving Ashley down to Minneapolis later today.

This has been a busy week here on Ottertail Peninsula, and more specifically on our little stretch of West Shores Road. Of course Norm and the Malays are here, they're here all year, but in addition to the "locals" I'm here, as are the Newmans, various groups at the Poages, Burgesons, Gizas and even Gunnufsons. There wasn't an empty cabin during the July 4th weekend. About half have gone home now, but the other half remain, so it's not as quiet here as it typically is during the week.

I spoke with Kathleen just before noon and she was in St. Cloud dealing with some troubling issues with her HTC Droid phone, and more specifically, with the service from AT&T. She was going to go to an AT&T store in St. Cloud to try to straighten out the problems. Once she gets that figured out she was going to pick up Ashley and take her to Minneapolis.

By 1:00 p.m. the temperature had climbed to 74 degrees and it felt hot and humid. The wind had also shifted and was blowing out of the SSW at a calm 5-8 mph. After a quick bite to eat I decided to fishing, but not for walleye. I thought since it's relatively calm and hot that it would be interesting to do some bass fishing.

Using the classic Palomar knot, I tied on a 3/0 offset hook and Texas rigged it with an original 5-inch Senko with no additional weight. I started by tossing the Senko into 3-5 feet of water near the reeds off the end of Norm's dock. As usual I caught a nice medium-sized "welcome bass." I fished in and around the reeds by Norm's for about 10 minutes but didn't catch another largemouth.

I then used the MinnKota electric trolling motor to work my way north along the edge of the reeds. The water temperature in this location was a hot 81 degrees. I made dozens of casts into the reeds as I moved toward Schiebe's cabin. But still I caught no more bass.

I finally gave up on bass fishing and decided to try a little slip bobber fishing with a small walleye hook tipped with a leech. I motored to a spot in 10 feet of water between our house and cabin and got to work. I spent about 45 minutes slip-bobber fishing, but again struck out.

I came ashore at 3:30 p.m. and had some lunch.

Since the fishing has been so poor, I decided to stay off the lake tonight and instead enjoy the beauty of the lake during sunset from our back porch. Unfortunately as the evening progressed storm clouds moved in and the sunset was more like grey turning to darker grey turning to black.

The forecast calls for storms after midnight, but as of 12:10 a.m. the only sign of a storm was some distant rumbling of thunder every so often. It's also supposed to be storming tomorrow morning and continue to rain until early afternoon. We'll see...