Another popular vacation pastime is fishing.
This year we added a minnow seine to our list of stuff to drag up to the cabin. By all accounts it was a wildly successful venture as we were able to catch as many minnows as we needed. In past years, if we wanted minnows after the first 2-3 days, we’d have to fetch them in town, 23 miles away, so we often went without.
Marty and I quickly got the hang of the seine net and scooped up no where near our limit of 24 dozen! It made catching the bait almost as much fun as catching the fish.
Not all the fish are this big! Here is a tough decision between taking off a fish or eating a smore!
One evening we paddled out to a rocky, treeless island and fished in the middle of the lake. One of Martin’s new lures gave him a thrill – he bought some impregnatedfishysmellingrubber crawdads and had the pleasure of a small pike jump out of the water to get his lure as he was lifting the crawdad out of the water. I decided the rubbery crayfish was the perfect 7-year-old bait as it is equally alluring being reeled in or lying on the bottom when attention wanes.
Here I am modeling my new line of “Fidel Wear” as I realized all my clothes that day were olive green and brown, unofficial colors of the revloution. Fishing was not great – probably caught about a dozen keepers. We found that a snapping turtle found the docks to be an open buffet.
One day we caught some fish in the morning and a few hours later, all that was left were the fish heads on the stringer. The next day, on a deeper dock and with us gone for just an hour for dinner, the turtle got another meal. So, on the annual mid-week shopping run to Ely, I got one of the old fashioned collapsable steel mesh baskets to keep the fish in and officially closed the all you can eat buffet.
Glad that you’re having fun on your vacation. Ely is one of my favorite places in the whole world. We rented a cabin for 2 weeks every summer at Camp Van Vac on Burntside. I still hope every year to be able to join my folks for a week. Your kids will treasure these memories for the rest of their lives. Imagine 20 years from now the stories you’ll tell about that turtle!
You’re living the good life right now!! Not enough families do this kind of trip anymore, and that’s a shame. Good looking canoe!!