Friday, July 6, 2018

We got up at five to get ready to meet the fishing guide that morning. We hired Cal Ritchie to guide us on Eagle Lake. We asked that he show us some places around our camp where we can catch Walleye. After we finished our Bible study, we got all of our stuff loaded in the truck and Dad drove Scott and I to Deer Trail where Cal was going to meet us at 8am. Dad was hurting really badly so decided not to go. Jason and Bob met us shortly before 8 at the dock. They were going to follow in their boat. Cal pulled up in his huge boat. It was 21 feet and 104 Kingfisher (one of his sponsors). He had an automatic trolling MinnKota on the back (twice the size as ours) with three batteries hooked up to it. He also had a trolling motor on the back of the boat for days when he needs to troll backwards due to the wind. He had a Lawrence about three times as big as ours that had all of the bells and whistles. He started us out at the reef by Sunset. He said that he almost always catches walleye there. He set my pole (I was using Dad’s ultralight pole) up with a Lindy rig and a nightcrawler. Scott used a windy with a jig and a minnow and Cal used a variation of that. Scott caught a walleye and a perch but there didn’t seem to be fish there so we moved on. Cal said we would “Run and gun” all day. If they aren’t biting after a few minutes we head to the next hole.

Next, we went to Flattop Reef. I think I caught one and Jason and Bob both lost one because they had forgotten their net so I called Mom and asked if they could bring them a net. Cal said we could run back because we could literally see the dock from where we were but I said this would be good because maybe Dad would stay. We weren’t catching much but we had to wait for Mom and Dad to get ready and come out so we stayed there a little longer. Just before Mom and Dad pulled up in the boat we started catching. I caught about three (two keepers) and Cal caught even better ones. Scott lost one and caught at least one. I think Jason and Bob both caught a keeper there. Jason caught one in the slot so it had to be thrown back. Next we headed to a reef off of Strawberry that was seemingly in the middle of the lake but it was on a reef from about 15-23 feet. We had a couple bites. I think Cal and I both caught one or two there. We left Bob and Dad’s boat there and we went to check out another place a little further west. We each caught a couple and then lost them. The “hump” kept moving so we couldn’t stay in one place very long. That is the lesson that I really came away with. Cal showed me a how to read the Lawrence. He taught us to turn off the “fish” mode and put it in on auto. The screen that shows the fish pictures are misleading because it’s usually small fish or mayfly stuff. On auto you just see humps on the bottom. Usually those are fish. Every time he would mark (which I figured out meant see those humps on the screen) we would catch fish.

We lost our hump so we headed over to the west end of Burnt. This is one of his favorite spots because he said a lot of people don’t know about it. We were down to about twenty minutes of our four hour session and we weren’t having tons of luck. Then Cal caught one, then Dad caught one, then Cal and I caught simultaneously. Then we all started taking turns. Everyone caught their limit except Bob and Jason needed one more. Cal went over time but finally had to take us back because he had to take his boat into Kenora to get the oil changed. Mom and Dad followed us back to pick us up and Jason and Bob stayed to try to catch their last one. I later found out that they went back to Flattop. Jason came back with a big one. We put them on a stringer and took our picture by the Deer Trail sign. We went back to camp and filleted our catch.

Later that afternoon we took the float boat out with Kim, Alexa, and Olivia to Paradise and had an eagle show. I got quite a few pictures. We found a junk pile of beer bottles and cans. Scott hopped on the island and filled up a bag but there were too many to pick up. That must be a party place for people.

For dinner, we had a fish fry of course at the lodge. It was Jason’s last night so we played a round of golf. At ten, Jason and the kids tried to put on a fireworks display for us but the mosquitos were horrendous.  Bob left in the middle of the second sequence and on the last one Jason and the kids abandoned ship and we all ran to our houses.