August 4, 2011 -- On Leech Lake

Today was another beautiful day at Leech Lake. This morning at 9:00 a.m. the temperature was 74 degrees, the sky was blue and the sun was shining and there was a good wind blowing at 12-15 mph out of the SSW.

Since I was the only one awake, I decided to start painting the fish-cleaning house. I had found a gallon of paint over at the cabin so I thought I'd use that since I only had about a third of gallon from the five gallons I'd purchased earlier in the week.

I got the front part of the fish-cleaning house with the remaining third of a gallon of paint and went to use the unopened can of paint when I realized it was an oil-based stain rather than the latex paint I had been using; although the same color. Rather than mix oil-based and latex on the same building, I decided to wait and buy some more latex-based paint. So the fish-cleaning house will have to sit unpainted until our next trip into Bemidji.

Once the Coyles were up, Tim, Jackson and I decided to go fishing. Joe, Connor and Sandy elected to stay on shore.

We got out onto the water just after 2:00 p.m. and I found that the SW wind to be stronger than I originally expected, blowing at 12-18 mph with gusts up over 20 mph. The sky was sunny and the temperature was close to 80 degrees. The water temperature was 80 degrees.

With swell of 18" to 2 feet I keep the boat moving slowly as we motored out past Second Duck Point into Duck Bay in 10-12 feet of water.

We deployed the drift sock, tipped our jigs with fathead minnows and began fishing. We caught numerous perch during our three hours on the water, but only one 10-inch keeper. Together with the 6 perch caught from the other day, we'll have 7 filleted perch to eat for dinner tonight.

We came back to shore shortly after 5:00 p.m. I cleaned the perch, and then jumped into the lake to cool off and to clean off.

I got the grill started at 7:30 p.m. and then went home to prep the fish for beer-battering. Joe and Sandy prepped the "danger dogs" and brats. We had a very tasty and filling meal of beer-battered perch, brats, danger dogs, salad and fruit.

We decided to stay on shore tonight and play games rather than go trolling. We played several rounds of liar's dice, the set Rick brought over from Australia, which was a lot of fun. Eventually Tim and Sandy made their way back to the cabin while Joe, Connor, Jackson and I watched the new remake of True Grit on DVD.

It was another fun day at Leech Lake. Good night.