August 18, 2011 -- On Leech Lake

This morning at 8:00 a.m. the temperature was a chilly 54 degrees, the wind was out of the SSW at 8-12 mph, and the sky was perfectly clear, not a cloud in sight.

I ate breakfast and waited for the electrician to show up. During a recent storm some lightning that flashed directly overhead had played havoc with one of our circuit breakers rendering our back porch lights inoperative and also destroying the GFI switch in the bathroom. I also wanted to switch out the circuit breaker on the security system because it was had a GFI component to it and throughout the winter it has a habit of tripping the circuit off which requires my neighbor Tom Malay to drop by and reset the switch. With a non-GFI breaker in place that problem should be eliminated.

At 10:30 a.m., Brian from Todavich Electric showed up. At first, he thought he would have to climb into the attic to fix the problem, but he discovered a faulty circuit breaker was the culprit and was able to fix it at the electrical panel in the kitchen. He then quickly replaced the damaged GFI outlet in the bathroom, before moving next door to the cabin. Once there, it took him only 10 minutes or so to swap out the GFI circuit breaker with one that didn't have the GFI switch. By 11:30 a.m. he was on his way.

Joe and I were hungry, and so we made a classic northwoods breakfast of eggs, bacon, hash browns and coffee. And for good measure, Joe had a couple of buckwheat pancakes to boot!

Despite a fairly stiff 12-17 mph WSW wind, Joe and I decided to try to go muskie fishing. The plan was to motor south to Oak Point/Joe's Landing then head north along the western shore of Sucker Bay to Star Point, Little Hardwood Point, Big Hardwood Point and end up in Deadhead Bay. We got about half way between Second Duck Point and Big Hardwood point on our way south, but the waves kept getting bigger and bigger. I had to motor the boat down to just about 7 mph ground speed to keep from bashing the boat in the large swells. At that point Joe suggested we abandon our muskie fishing plans and instead use the wind to drift and jig for perch and walleye.

Since I had planned to focus our angling efforts on muskie I'd left the minnows back at the boat lift. After a brief stop to pick up the fatheads we were once again motoring -- slowly -- back to Second Duck Point. The wind was still blowing at 12-17 mph, with gusts, which came at fairly regular intervals, up over 25 mph. The temperature was 72 degrees and the sky was nearly devoid of all cloud cover. We could just see a few clouds in the extreme northwest. The water temperature was 74.5 degrees.

I deployed the drift sock and took up position in the bow of the boat. Joe took a seat in the stern and we dropped in our jigs tipped with fathead minnows. Joe hooked into something very early into our first pass and whatever it was snapped his line and took his jig. After retying a new jig onto his line Joe got back to fishing.

We caught several small to medium sized perch and I caught a small walleye, that couldn't have measured more than 10- or 11-inches. Joe hooked into something that gave him a bit of battle and when he got it into the boat I saw that he'd caught a nice 12-inch black crappie. Crappie are a very tasty fish, so we put it in the live well and planned to eat it with the jumbo perch that we were going to cook tonight as part of our "man feast."

We made a total of four passes from Duck Bay north toward Malay's. Then we came ashore, with just the one crappie.

Once on shore I cleaned the crappie and got it ready for the beer-batter coating I used it and the jumbo perch. In addition to the fish, we had slow-cooked oven-baked pork spare ribs (with my own dry rub recipe), Cole slaw, and French fries. It was simply delicious!

The wind continued to howl all evening so we didn't go out fishing. Plus, I need to get up early on Friday morning because the Anderson Window repair guy is coming out to fix the latches and cranking mechanism on a couple of the windows in our living room. I called it an early night.

Today was another great day on Leech Lake.