My vacation, and my vacation after vacation

 VACATION week was finally here, and I started it in the early am and driving to Wisconsin to fish with my buddy Ronnie out of Sheboygan, Monday and Tuesday. After looking at the weather forecast, with the waves between 2 and 5 for the foreseeable future we decided to postpone until the end of the vacation in hopes of better conditions.

Spoiler alert the forecast didn't get any better.......

 

So after visiting with Ronnie for several hours, I was back on the road and headed for home. Don't actually recall when I got home but I did make it. I went in sat with the folks for a minute, unpacked, showered and headed for bed.

 

Fun story, Jason and I made plans to go down to the bay on Tuesday.... so I went out last minute to get a license.... The Minnesota DNR decided to shut down the old system and start a new one... during fishing season 👿 instead of... I don't know... January when nothing huge is going on??? Government am I right.

 

OK since I needed the license for the 9th and the WHOLE site was shut down on the 8th I had to wait until the next morning. Well, I got up and made my way to Walmart at 6a to get a license..... they didn't have the password from the state. So go to L and M to get a license after they opened at 7:30a, they also couldn't get online to apply for a license. So I headed back to the house where Jason had the boat hooked up and ready, I told him what was happening with my lic. I found a number to call and complain but they didn't open until 8a. I was going to call and give them a piece of my mind...... I can't really afford to loose a piece, but I'll sacrifice. Meanwhile Jason was logging in, and I mentioned I couldn't get past the phone number because it kept saying I needed a 10 digit phone number, after I put in my 10 digit phone number. Well, all of a sudden he says that he's in and I looked at the time.... 8:03a....😡 So I got online on my phone, which I hate doing, and bought a license.

Finally off to the bay by 8:30.

Day 1 fishing-

The bay 

We went through many shorts but finally made a limit.... that I allowed Jason to clean. I had to be home to go to Duluth to hit Fleet Farm and Sam's Club along with a couple other stops. The first of which was a visit to the foot doctor for Dad.

I opted to stay in the car and maybe take a nap. Well, I woke up after an hour or so and the car was a little muggy and warm so I unlocked and opened the door..... I didn't know the alarm would go off.... and with no way to stop it all I could do was laugh and head inside. When I got in the doors I heard, "is that a car alarm" from the lady at the front desk. I raised my hand and said yep that's me, I need the keys from Gary or Jan S. So, a guy from the front desk started to escort me to the exam rooms and when the door opened I saw mom and dad, pointed and said, "yep that's them". Fortunately they were all done and ready to leave anyway.... win/win.

 

Day 2 fishing- 

I went out to Chub lake to put some pike numbers on the board... I only had a half day to fish but I put many fish in the boat. I didn't have a clicker yet so I don't know for sure, I do know I had a really good time.

Chub is a numbers lake without too much size they are mostly 1-2' long but are really fun to catch. The one in the first pic is the biggest I have caught out of that lake. After fishing I went with the family and showed my ass shot a round of trap at the gun club.... it's something I get to do every year just to keep me humble.

 

Day 3 fishing- 

Jason and I went back down to the bay not only did we have a great day and catch a limit we had a little surprise in store.

Picture of Jason taking a picture of a deer. 

Not sure, what he was taking a picture of here but I got a pic of it.

Here begins the "surprise" part... on our way back from the bay we noticed a car pass us pointing down aggressively. After the second car passed pointing down aggressively we thought, maybe we should stop and check. So we pulled over on the freeway.... in town... while everyone in the 2 lanes passed us at 60 mph only to find we have almost lost a wheel. So we got back in the truck and limped it, give or take a mile until we could get to an off ramp and pull into a Super 1 parking lot. We called Lance and sent out the bat signal for some help. Well, help arrived in the form of my cousin Les who donned his cape and mask and took control. In less than 15 mins we had the bearing off and were in search of new. We found them at the local O' Reilly automotive that was the good news. Bad news, we also lost the castle nut and the bendy lock washer. After an extensive search in Duluth, we gave up and ran to Gene's Marine in Cloquet. After all was said and done it took a couple hours of running to get all the stuff we needed to reinstall the hub, bearings and tire. We didn't have a dust cover so Les duct taped the hub, cut a plastic bottle in half, shoved that on the hub and zip tied it, as a temp fix, that I actually used the rest of the time I was there.

Notice there's nothing holding the hub on, no bearings, no castle nut.... just luck. When Jason jacked up the tire all I had to do was grab the wheel and it was off. 😲

I didn't get a pic of the pop bottle rolling down the road but wished I had, kinda funny. This whole debacle actually hit home for me. I have not ever had an issue such as this and with all the traveling I do I needed to have an emergency bearing kit. Something that has all the parts I would need if I had a bearing go out on the road.

I know I'm missing grease, bearings, dust cover..... ext, I have most of it just haven't put it in yet... it's a work in progress.

Anyway, after all of that we finally made it home let Mom and Dad know what happened, put the boat in garage and went on with the vacation.

 Day 4 fishing-

After I sent my cousin Corey a pic of that pike he got back to me and invited me to come out to Kris's cabin to fish Prairie lake. It was really windy and kinda hard to get a good drift but we still caught some fish and had a great time.

See these are shoe's

Dude get some shoes..... 🙈

This is just another cookie cutter lake that is usually a decent numbers lake, but the wind made it a difficult day. After we got back to the cabin Kris was busy on the flat top, Jen was busy on fire patrol and Nae and Tom showed up with the fixin's for supper. Thanks to everyone if I forgot to say it. The food and company was as always, wonderful. 

 

 Day 5 fishing-

Dad finally had some time to make a trip down to the bay. We had a really good day, with alot of shorts and only one short of limit.

We ran the flats again and hit all our fish with the new Harvest Shad by Rapala. Which is what I used the last couple times to the bay. I now have an extensive selection of Harvest Shad to deploy next year.

 

Day 6 fishing-

I went back out to Chub lake and continued to rip lips for half a day.... I had to be back for Jason's daughter Breanna's last play. 

I could've fished a little bit longer if I knew a train was going to hold me up... 😈 I did have a 26 fish half day..... I bought a clicker to keep track.

I got back and changed and made it to the play, which was really good considering it was......... a play. Breanna did a really good job through out the entire play. Now she's off to UWS for college, good luck Breanna.

 Day 7 fishing-

Finally made it out to Island lake for a day of "muskie" fishing. The wind treated me pretty bad again, and it was hard getting a good drift going. But I made the best of it and fished the best drifts the wind let me fish. I had a 24 fish... sun up to sun down day of fishing. It was long day and the catches weren't huge or abundant but it was a really fun day of casting.

Day 8 fishing-

Back out to the bay with Dad, I can't recall how we did and I didn't get any pics but I am sure we had shorts.

I found a DL in a parking lot and when I brought it up to him I caught this full rainbow.

 

Day 9 fishing-
My Uncle Dave got ahold of me and asked if I wanted to go out with him on Lake Superior, of course I said yes. He asked to see if Jason wanted to go and I did and he did, so we went down to Dave's slip..... Then we realized it wasn't going to be easy, Grandma's was getting ready to start and many of the roads we needed to get to were blocked and detoured. So Jacee and I kinda drove around looking for a kink in the armor that we didn't find until Dave called and guided us in on the phone. This was the first time in a long time that Dave beat me down to the boat. Usually I have the boat set up to fish before Dave gets there... anyway we finally got everything situated and set course for the big lake. We got out and started setting up and it didn't take too long before we caught out first fish.

A nice little king

Then Dave caught a nice laker

I was last up and I caught a decent king

 

 Then Jacee caught this laker

And the last fish of the day was a laker that Dave caught. 

 

I gotta say that for once the lures I brought caught. I have been bringing lures to thank Dave for taking me out for as long as he has been taking me out. This is the first time that any of the lures I brought caught..... not one, or two but three fish and two of them silver...👏👏 yay me. Needless to say the lakers all went back and the silver went home with Jason.

 

This is the weather buoy that we caught.....

We were just trolling along when I saw something yellow off in the distance. We got out the binoculars but couldn't make out what it was, so we got closer.... OK too close.

The downrigger ball got caught on the anchor line of the buoy.

We really weren't tied up too over long, but it was all hands on deck to get everything in and out of the way to not make the issue worse.
 

 Super day thanks Dave. 

 

 Well that was my last day not only fishing but almost the last day on vacation. I had one more half day before I had to leave and get home for my vacation after my vacation.

The next day was father's day and what do you get the man who has everything???  I thought long and hard and finally I got him something that he didn't have, nor did he really want.

A flat tire.... I was hooking up the boat to bring it and fill with gas, after I hooked it up I noticed something was a little off. I looked and sure enough we had a flat, I waited for Dad to get up to show him. He took it pretty well considering that 09 truck is his baby. The only other issue is to change the tire with the spare, which has never been down. I tried to lower it and nothing, so we grabbed a cutting wheel and I commenced to cutting the spare off the truck. After a little while and some coaxing the spare was free, the flat was off and I was on my way to fill the boat. 

 All in all it was a really good but kinda short trip. I want to thank everyone and let you know that I appreciate everything you do to make my vacations awesome.

 

And of course a special shout out to Lance for allowing me to use the boat again this year. I really do appreciate that. 

 

When I got home I proceeded to get ready for my second vacation, get the axle back on the trailer and get ready to go to work.  

 

Now back to work.... Now back to vacation 

 

Ended up in De Tour Village, MI after work on Sunday evening to fish the Atlantic salmon in the straights between De Tour and Drummond island. Even with the weather forecast like this...

This was our forecast pretty much everyday, we actually stayed in for a couple hours Monday morning just to let it pass. When we did get out it took a minute to set up but before too long we were fishing.

I just want to mention that Jason gets the credit for almost all of the pictures. Thanks Jacee

That was day one and we still ran into some weather, and got blown off the lake. 

The only thing we didn't run into were Salmon. But optimism was still high even though we had to dry some clothes out to get ready for day #2.

 

Day 2 showed up with mostly fog, some sun, and on the outside maybe some rain. The fog was first and WOW did it show up in force. I wish we had some pics but it seems we were too busy watching for other boats. I wasn't however watching for shallow ground, without being able to see in the fog and not having my fish-finder view on the correct screen I put us up in the shallows. Which in turn put all my lead core rods on the bottom. With all the lead on the bottom and the motor cut and the wind blowing slightly we had quite the issue. We had to get the lines up that are free and try and get down to where the lead was caught under the first rocks before we could follow it up to where the lure was. Long story short we managed to save most of the core and only lost 5 lures, not terrible, but for me was incredibly stressful. After we got retied and ready to fish again the sun came out for a while, then the wind, a little rain and then more sun. We ran the gambit of weather issues and still no fish, not even a bump, or a false release. I felt terrible especially since I wouldn't entertain any other ideas. I didn't know what we were doing wrong, or if there was another spot to try. I knew there were walleye's around Drummond but I went for salmon, and couldn't let it go.

That being said we hammered it out for 12ish hours with nothing to show but tired fisherman. And my attitude was not the best to say the least. It's like I told my Dad, I'll sit out here for 3 days without a bump and not be phased, but I don't want you to do it. I felt terrible.

freighter and a ferry

So after I gone done beating myself up about how I acted and how we did, I finally made the call to the lucky lure bait shop to see if I had missed anything. I was told that I was in the right spot, using the right lures, during the right time of the year.... not a whole lot of comfort in that but at least I know we weren't doing anything wrong. Except time and knowing where else I could've trolled to try for some salmon or lakers. I've got some more research to do, but I will be back to try for an Atlantic. 

 And I would like to take this time to apologize to my captives.... you guys were great and I was a bit frustrated with the lack of action. I did get a little bit.... not sure how to say this..... Oh yeah, Dickish. For that I formally apologize.

 

Love you guys.