Of all the things I miss.....

 I miss my Quantum Monster 7.1:1 musky reel the most. I've been driving myself crazy, I know I brought this reel on vacation but cannot find it since I got home. I've gone through my car (yes I cleaned it), my duffel, both fishing bags at least 3 times and still have been unable to locate my reel. The sickening part is, I have never even used this reel. I brought it to run some of my faster lures and don't even think I put line on it yet. Now not only have I lost a brand new reel, if I can't locate it, I'll have to buy another triple digit reel. I'm just sick.

 

Now that I got that out, let's catch up a little.

I just got back from vacation a week ago and it feels like I already need another (8 months and counting). Vacation is always great and it was super to get home and be around the fam for a couple weeks. 

 

Rick and "Ricky"

Kylee with her turkey "Ricky"

The old homestead... Ky's old house (the fam is moving to AZ)

 

The fishing.... well the fishing was a little lacking this year. The first week I stayed with Rick and Beth in the Falls and fished the American side of Rainy. I fished alone, because Rick wouldn't fish "the Southern Canadian" side of the lake. The first day I caught a couple smallies and some pike. 

 Day one on Rainy was a doozy, the big motor got me across the lake, but I had to use the trolling motor to get back to the landing. Turns out the starter fuse had blown and the big motor wouldn't fire. No worries I still had a good time and plenty of charge in the trolling batteries.

 I was able to kill 36 chubs and catch 4 walleye, one of them was a 14" keeper. This is one of the shorts that I released. The walleye wanted the jig on the bottom, not moving, if it was moving they wouldn't take it.

This pike made it to the table

I did have one super day on the water, Saturday started out windy so I went to Golden portage for half the day. When I came back out into black bay, the whole lake had slicked out. 

Let the smallie fest begin.

 

 

 

 

The next day was super windy so I only fished for a couple hours. I had a super hard time just finding a place to drift with the wind. It seemed the wind just kept switching directions.

Juvenile Loony Bird

 The last day on Rainy was rather non-eventful. As a whole the fishing was and I'm using the word loosely... slow. I think the lake had just turned over and put all the fish in a tight lipped holding pattern. If I were there today I'm sure the fishing would be alot better.

After I left the falls on Tues I headed to Cloquet to stay with Mom, Dad and see the rest of the family.

Wednesday my brother Jason invited me to go kayak fishing with him on Bear Lake. What I didn't know at the time of accepting the invite and only realized a couple hours in was.... This was less about fishing and more about how long I could survive this medieval torture device Jason called "an inflatable kayak". Wow what a terrible way to treat someone who qualifies for AARP. 

 That being said we did manage to catch the biggest small fish in the lake.

 

Jacee did catch a really nice largemouth.

All good things must end... Finally Jason had had enough of torturing me and called it a day. I had to have him tow me in though... my motor was broken.

he did make me lunch that I ate on the way in.

On Thursday we went to Duluth to do some shopping then headed to Superior for beer and stopped to look at buying some trees. After finding out how much trees are we headed to the shack to get some free trees. Then it was back to dig in the old gravel pit AKA Mom and Dads backyard. We dug 3 holes for trees and sunk 9 fence posts to stop the deer from eating the leaves. It wasn't even a couple hours later that Mom got this picture.

This doe was pretty upset that someone had cordoned off her lunch. Dad has to take care of the new trees we don't want to have to pull dead trees and replant next year.

Then I got to do the hang some stuff in the house part of the vacation. I hung a clock, a wire tree thing and then this not so attractive straight from the swamp type of cattail thing with a long triangular potting type thing, that doesn't go with anything else in the house. My mom has really good taste... normally, but this thing ouff-da I don't know. We'll see after we revisit the, "ok time to hang stuff" part of the vacation next year. I hope she's able to tie things together.

Saturday and Sunday I went fishing with Dave and Isaiah. Saturday we did catch a whitefish it's the first whitefish taken on the boat, unfortunately that was all we caught. We did have a really good time. 

Thanks Dave

To finish off the vacation ritual I still had to go fishing with Corey. So, when Dave and I finished fishing on Sunday I texted Corey that I was on my way. Corey was out at Prairie lake at Renee's cabin... Hi Nae it was great to see you and Tom this year, hopefully next year we will be at the cabin, Lotsa Love.... well since I was only at the cabin once last year I gave Corey a call to get the number. When he answered I told him my predicament and he said that he wasn't even at the cabin but he was at home. So I did a 180, turned on my gps and headed to his house to go fishing. Well by the time I got there it was around 4ish and would've been earlier if he would've answered my text when I sent it.... but whatever... Anyway once I got to the house we chucked our gear in the boat, added another fisher person, Addy, and headed over to Caribou lake to try our luck. Well, Addy caught the money fish, a 3" perch, I know Addy I still owe you a dollar. Then Addy and Corey got hung up in some very healthy weeds.

  I caught some bass

And for the second time on this trip the the big motor failed to start, and for the second time on this trip I had to row in. By the way I gotta say Addy, not every situation has to be solved by calling mom and/or the Coast Guard.😂 We did neither and we're still here to write about the memory of the night we had to paddle in. 😘

All in all I had a really good vacation this year. Thanks to everyone I hope you had just as good of a time as I did. I'm already counting down the days until I get to see you. 

 

When I got home, it was try to get back into the swing of things. Thursday was opening deer and turkey so I was in the woods for the first half of the day.

couple deer

I got in my stand Thursday and had 8 or so turkeys fly down at daybreak. So, Monday I sat on the ground for the first hour and was able to shoot my fall bird. Then I got into the stand and tried for a deer. I could've shot a small doe but held off for something bigger.

Mondays fall turkey

Yesterday when I was done I had a deer blow on my way out. So, I took this morning off to give the woods a break. I needed to do some laundry, winterize the boat and get this blog back on track anyway. I'll be heading out in the morning to try and get a deer, I've been seeing them but have only seen 2 shooters and they didn't come close enough for a shot.