On Leech Lake, June 19, 2010

My boat, at the top of the ramp, waiting to be launched.

Today was the first day I was on the lake in 2010. I think this is the latest I've made it out onto the water in any year since I've had a place on Leech Lake.

The weather this morning was grey, drizzly and breezy, but as the day progressed the drizzle stopped and the wind gradually died down from 15-18 mph out of the NW to around 8 mph. That made it ideal conditions to put the boat in the water.

Around 1:30 p.m. Rick and I got the boat into the water and onto the boat lift. We then put the canopy on the lift and ran the power cord underneath the dock out to the boat lift and secured it for the season. I now have power at the end of the dock -- which is handy for the light at night and for charging my MinnKota electric trolling motor.

After dinner, Rick and I went out fishing at around 8:45 p.m. The sunset tonight was at 9:13 p.m., the moon was 57% waxing, the water temperature was 66.6 degrees and the wind was slight at 5-8 mph out of the north.

We used our usual Rapala Minnow Raps trolled about 50-60 feet behind the boat at a ground speed of 2.15 mph.

We trolled from Malays house to a point between Second Duck Point and Duck Point in 10-12 feet of water. After many passes with no bites, Rick finally hooked into a sturdy 22" walleye at 10:15 p.m just past Second Duck Point. The fish was hooked awkwardly, so we had to snip the barbs of the trailing treble hook to safely remove the lure from the fish. The fish fell within the Leech Lake slot limit -- where all walleyes between 18 and 26 inches must go back into the lake -- so we released it unharmed.

Then around 10:45 p.m., on our final pass of the night, in almost the same spot, Rick caught a very nice 16 3/4" eater walleye. That fish went into the livewell and will be dinner on Sunday night (Father's Day).

Even though I didn't catch a fish this night, the boat did smell of walleye by the time we made it back to the boat lift which is as it should be. All in all, a good first night on Leech Lake.

Arrival Date Set

My first visit to Leech Lake in 2010 has been confirmed. I'm leaving California on Tuesday, June 15 and will arrive in Bemidji later that day.

This is mainly a property maintenance visit as I need to replace the roof on my cabin in order to keep the insurance company from canceling my policy. Apparently they don't like the fact that several small trees are growing out of the 40-plus year old roof.

Rick will be joining me at the lake on Thursday, June 17 and soon after the construction project will begin.

Check back to this blog for before, during and after photos of the roofing project. This blog will also serve as a public record of the work done in case my insurance company wants to play any games.

So beginning June 15, you'll be seeing daily updates, with photos, to this blog. See you soon, again, in the blogosphere.

2010 MN Walleye Opener -- Tomorrow!!

Unfortunately, I will not be at Leech Lake for this year's walleye opener, which begins at midnight tonight, or as soon as it becomes May 15.

From what I've heard from my neighbors on Sucker Bay, walleyes of varying sizes have been caught the past few weeks (and put back into the lake) during perch fishing sessions. This should bode well for those people targeting walleye.

For a variety of reasons, I will not be making my first visit to Leech Lake in 2010 until mid-June, a full month after opener. This will be the first May since we bought our cabin back in 2001, that I've not been at the lake in May.

Once I arrive at the lake, I will again begin my daily posts about experiences on and off the water. Until then, I'll be making occasion posts with reports from friends and neighbors.

Until June...

Photo/Album: Post 8

It's been more than a couple of months since my last Photo/Album entry, so I thought I better get to it and put up a new post. These past couple of months I've been busy with work, and with getting my amateur radio license. I am now a licensed general class amateur radio operator with the call sign W6LLK (for Leech Lake). Who knows you might hear me on HF some day.

Now on with the Photo/Album portion of the post.

PHOTO


This photo was taken from the lake side of our house on Sucker Bay looking WSW toward Big Hardwood Point. The photo was taken late in the day and late in the season. Most of the snow has melted off the ice, making it easy to get on and off the ice and enabling me to use my 4-wheeler instead of a snowmobile to move about on the frozen lake.

From what I hear from my neighbors on Leech Lake, the temperatures have been in the 40's, the snow is nearly all gone, and spring is just around the corner. Of course it is Northern Minnesota so I would expect that there will be another big snowstorm or two before walleye opener on May 15.

ALBUM


By 1977, I had started to crave new and interesting music, beyond the normal rock 'n' roll of the 1970s. Sure, I still liked the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, etc., but I wanted something new, something I hadn't heard a hundred times. By chance, I stumbled across a Caravan album at Sounds and Diversions, an interesting store in downtown Lansing that sold everything from rolling papers to albums and posters to tie-dyed clothing.

After a month or two, I had purchased a couple of Caravan albums, but to this day, my favorite remains In the Land of Grey and Pink. The music, which has been tagged with the Canterbury Sound moniker, is a blend of jazz, rock, folk, classic and traditional English music.

As always, if you're interested in the sound, and video, of the album I'm featuring, check this out --a very psychedelic English band from 1971. Enjoy.

Photo/Album: Post 7

Here's the seventh installment of my Photo/Album series. I hope you enjoy seeing some of my archived photos from my stays at Leech Lake, and learning about my favorite albums, as much as I enjoy posting them. More on my next visit to Leech Lake in another post.

PHOTO


This is a photo taken by me looking back at our ice fishing house and John Newman's snow mobile. During this visit in the winter of 2006, I was lucky enough to have the use of one of Tom Malay's extra snow machines. On this day, John and I decided to go ice fishing despite an absolutely powerful blizzard, with temperatures hovering around 5 degrees and winds howling out of the NW at more than 25 mph.

Once out on frozen Leech Lake, I took my sled some distance from the ice house and snapped this picture. If you look very carefully, you might be able to see the horizon, separating the ice for the sky.

After taking this picture I motored back to the warmth of the ice house and within minutes caught a 30+ inch northern pike. The perch fishing wasn't fantastic this day, but it was a lot of fun being out on the lake during white-out conditions.

ALBUM


As a kid, it was just me and my younger sister. Therefore, most of the music I listened to was as a result of recommendations from friends or albums I discovered myself. One day way back in 1973, while in a record store perusing the cassette tape case (in those days cassette tapes were in locked glass cases), the tape Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson, Lake & Palmer caught my eye.

I decided to buy the tape without ever having heard a note from this particular album or from ELP, an English progressive rock band that redefined the genre. The first time I remember really listening to the tape -- start to finish, carefully -- was at my grandparents house in Jackson, Michigan sometime during the winter months. I remember thinking that this was unlike anything I'd ever heard before. It took me several listenings, and actually several years, to really appreciate the brilliance of this album -- which I eventually bought on both vinyl and CD.

I had the opportunity to see ELP at Jenison Field House on the campus of Michigan State University sometime in the mid-1970s (the exact year escapes me), but I do remember that they played Karn Evil 9 in its entirty, which is their magnum opus, not only from the Brain Salad Surgery album, but from their long and storied career as well. To this day, Brain Salad Surgery remains one of my favorite albums.

As always, if you've never heard of Emerson, Lake & Palmer or Brain Salad Surgery, here's a little taste of Karn Evil 9 recorded live. Enjoy.

Photo/Album: Post 6

Welcome to the winter solstice 2009. It arrived at 11:47 a.m. CST today at Leech Lake. Therefore, for this installment of the Photo/Album series I thought I'd use a winter photo and an album that the band began recording in December, 1966.

PHOTO


This is a view of Sucker Bay looking north as a mid-winter's storm is brewing. The photo was taken on February 25, 2007 during a trip when my son Joe and I spent some wonderful time on the ice fishing, digging ourselves out of a massive winter blizzard and inside our warm house playing games and listening to music.

The Northwoods is a great place any time of the year, but there's something almost magical being there in the winter. The first thing that I always notice is how peaceful and quiet it is at Leech Lake during the winter months. This photo seems to capture that feeling for me.

ALBUM


I still remember hearing The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band for the very first time. I had purchased the album at the record store at the local mall, came home to my parents' house, went into my bedroom, removed the shrink-wrap plastic from the LP and placed it on my turntable. Although I'd been listening to The Beatles since I was in kindergarten, nothing had prepared me for listening to Sgt. Pepper in its entirety. Wow!

There is a very good reason that Rolling Stone magazine named Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band the #1 album of all time -- it's simply incredible. From the method the LP was recorded to the breakthrough artwork on the cover to the stellar music itself, there's nothing lacking in this record.

Recording for the LP started in December, 1966 and the album finally hit record stores in June, 1967. I purchased it years later, but to me it was as fresh and incredible as the day it was released.

In case you need a refresher, here's the first song on the album, the title track. Enjoy.

Photo/Album: Post 5

For this installment of my Photo/Album series -- where I post a picture from Leech Lake and highlight one of my favorite albums -- I've decided to go back a ways in history for both. The photo comes from a guided muskie trip we took back in 2003, and album goes back to 1965.

PHOTO

This is a picture of my friend Rick, who was visiting Leech Lake from his home in Brisbane, Australia, legendary Leech Lake guide Al Maas, my son Joe's shoulder, and a 50 1/2-inch muskie that was taken on a safety-pin style jig in 3-feet of water at the south end of Sucker Bay.

I had hired Maas to guide us on our hunt for muskie because at the time I was relatively unfamiliar with the lake, had never really fished for muskie in a serious fashion, and because it was Rick's birthday present I wanted to up the odds that he caught a fish. He did, and it remains to this day the biggest fish I've seen come out of Leech Lake.

ALBUM


Back when I was in high school I got a turntable for Christmas one year which finally gave me the ability to switch from cassette tapes to LPs which sound infinitely better, in my opinion.

As I started out compiling my album collection I knew I needed to add some Bob Dylan to the mix. Since I was unfamiliar with any of his albums in detail -- although I knew many of his hit singles -- my selection of his fifth studio album Bringing It All Back Home was made as much by chance as it was design. Boy, did I luck out.

It is not only one of Dylan's most celebrated albums, but one of the greatest rock albums of all time. In the 2003 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, where it listed the Top 500 rock albums of all time (see Photo/Album 4 for the #7 album on that list), Bringing It All Back Home ranked 31st.

Here is the studio version of Subterranean Homesick Blues, the first song on side 1 of the LP, which many people say foreshadowed the invention of rap music some 20 years later.

Photo/Album: Post 4

This is installment 4 of my Photo/Album series. I again selected a photo from my most recent stay at Leech Lake. For the album, I selected what is generally considered to be one of the greatest rock 'n' roll albums of all time. Enjoy.

PHOTO


October, 2009 was the fourth coldest October on record, and for Minnesota that's impressive. It was also one of the wettest and snowiest months on record in Minnesota. This photo was taken from the dock looking back at our harbor and house. You can see that most of the leaves on the trees haven't even fully changed color, yet there is snow on the ground. It would snow at least a few more times before it finally warmed up at the very end of the month and into November.

ALBUM


Soon after graduating from high school I moved into an old house in downtown Lansing, Michigan located just a couple of blocks from the state capital building. One of the guys that lived with me in the house -- Marcus Cafagna -- turned me onto, among many other things, the Rolling Stones album Exile on Main Street.

I was, of course, very familiar with the Rolling Stones at the time, but for some reason I had not yet discovered this particular album. It was released in 1972, and was the first 2-LP studio release from the Stones. Every song on this album is a gem and I never tire of listening to it.

Some years back, Rolling Stone magazine put out a special issue listing the Top 500 albums of the 'classic' rock 'n' roll era -- from 1964 through 1983. Topping the list was the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, while the Stones' Exile came in at number 7.

If you're unfamiliar with Exile on Main Street, check out this studio version of Sweet Virginia -- it might surprise you.

Photo/Album: Post 3

I went back to a photo from this past June for today's installment of my Photo/Album series, and went all the way back to 1959 for my album selection. Enjoy.

PHOTO

This is a photo of Sucker Bay on the afternoon of June 19, 2009. You can read more about my fishing success that day by visiting this link. I will tell you that I caught one walleye during an afternoon trip on the water, and two more that night while trolling. I also witnessed an incredible sunset during my evening trip onto Leech Lake.

ALBUM

From his late-1940s album The Birth of the Cool to his seminal work with his famous quartets of the 1950s and 1960s to his groundbreaking album Bitches Brew that gave birth to jazz fusion, no musician of the 20th century had more influence on music over a longer period of time than jazz legend Miles Davis.

I don't recall the first time I heard landmark LP Kind of Blue, but I do know that during my college days at Cal Poly I must have listened to this album hundreds of times with my friend Vince alone. John Coltrane and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley provide the dual saxophones on the set and are joined by Detroit native Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly split the session on piano.

Many music critics consider Kind of Blue not only one Miles Davis's best, and not just one of the best jazz albums ever produced, but one of the greatest albums ever recorded. If you've never heard this album, start hear with the album version of the unbelievable tune, So What.