June 2, 2012 -- On Leech Lake

This morning at 9:00 a.m. the temperature was 57 degrees, the wind was calm to very light and the skies were high and blue. Not great conditions for day one of the Leech Lake Walleye Tournament. I was surprised to see very few boats in front of our house and cabin. Usually during tournaments there are dozens of boats fishing here. Of course, when there's a little walleye chop on the bay the fishing conditions here are much better.

Rick went next door to chat with John Newman and as a result the two of them decided to go fishing; I elected to stay home and drink coffee, listen to classical music on MPR and ease into the day. I will be interested to learn if John and Rick have any better luck fishing than they did yesterday, when they essentially caught nothing of interest.

One week from today Kathleen will arrive for an extended stay at Leech Lake. I am very much looking forward to her visit. We always have a lot of fun when we're together here at the lake. I just hope it warms up considerably so we have a chance to go swimming. I suppose we could go swimming now, but with water temperatures at just 65 degrees, it's a bit cool for our California acclimated bodies.

When Rick returned from fishing he informed me that indeed the fishing had been poor with only a couple of small perch boated. He and I then went down to Jerry Schiebe's to help Jerry put up some paneling on the roof of his porch addition. We spent about 2 hours working on it and only managed to nail up 4 sheets due to the odd framing shape of the porch. The joists did not run true and aren't spaced quite right which made nailing the paneling to them very difficult, and in some places impossible. But Jerry was nonetheless thankful for the work we did accomplish.

After a bite of lunch, Rick and I headed out onto the water to do some fishing. When Rick was out with John earlier in the day they had spotted some crappies in Bass Bay so Rick wanted to start there since he's never caught a Leech Lake crappie.

I motored the boat into 3-feet of water in Bass Bay, noted that the water temperature had climbed to 67 degrees in the bay (in the main part of  Sucker Bay the temperature was 65 degrees), and lowered the MinnKota electric trolling motor into the water.

I slowly moved us around in the reeds, and we did see plenty of crappies, including some slab-sized ones, but we could not tempt any of them to bite. After 30 minutes of failed crappie hunting we relocated to the Birches where we caught lots of rock bass and a few small perch, but no walleyes or jumbo perch.

It was time for another move so I repositioned the boat in 14-feet of water in spot between the house and cabin. Using jigs and minnows we fished for another 45 minutes or so, but only caught some small perch. Finally, just before 4:00 p.m. we came ashore, got cleaned up and went next door to join John Newman for dinner.

John had invited Rick and I to a wonderful pork loin, mashed potato and gravy and green bean dinner, which was very tasty. We talked, ate and drank a couple of cold malted beverages before parting ways around 7:00 p.m. Rick and I came back to the house, got a few things together and then went back to the boat lift around 8:15 p.m. for an evening attempt at catching some walleyes.

We started by jigging with minnows in the spot between the house and cabin in 14 feet of water, a spot where a few days earlier I'd caught several nice walleye, but by the time we got there the light breeze that had been blowing out of the NNW had died down and the lake was dead calm; not ideal conditions for walleye fishing.

In addition to the poor fishing conditions, the area was filled with more than a dozen boats; the most we'd seen on the water this year during our evening fishing excursions. We jigged for about 30 minutes or so without any luck, so we changed tactics and started trolling with crankbaits.

With the moon just one day shy of being full, we thought the walleye would be out biting like crazy, but just the opposite was true. And although some of the boats left as the sky darkened, many remained meaning that my trolling was akin to running a slalom course where the poles are constantly moving. It was not a relaxing troll.

We fished for nearly 90 minutes in the area between Malay's cabin to the north and the middle of Duck Bay to the south and we caught only two small walleyes -- Rick caught a 14 1/2-inch fish while mine came in even smaller at just over 10 inches. At that point we decided it was time to leave. Apparently none of the other boats were having any success either, because about the same time we were leaving, so did all but one or two of the other boats.

Once inside we just relaxed and listened to some music. After a quick call to Kathleen --we discussed her arrival in just one week -- I decided to close things up for the night and go to bed. Good night from Leech Lake.