by Gene Gaut
Maple Grove, Minnesota
This is kind of a weird story that happened last summer on
MilleLacs Lake. My best friends, Tim and Joe, and I decided to head up to
MilleLacs on an early Saturday morning (we left at 5 a.m.). We went right
to the spot we found with a GPS two years earlier, and as usual, no one
was there. Out about five miles on the flats we had found a 15' hump that's
about 100 feet long and surrounded by 22 feet of water.
Right away Joe got the first fish, a three-pound walleye, and then we all
started catching them. That lasted about an hour and I guess we had about
ten fish in the live-well. Then they just stopped biting.
The sky was changing color from blue to gray to dark off in the distance.
It was also starting to thunder faintly. Tim said, "Great, this might
get them wally's to bite". Ten minutes later I looked up at Tim, who
was sitting in the middle of the boat with his hair sticking straight up!
"Joe, look at Tim," I said, laughing. Joe laughed too and took
his hat off to hit Tim with it. Joe's hair was standing straight up too.
I took my hat off, and could tell by their faces my hair was the same!
"Let's get out of here!" I said, but by then they were both already pulling their lines in. My boat goes 30 mph with just me in it, and right then I was wishing I was alone. We were about 1/2 mile from the spot when a big blue flash of lightning hit, right where we had been fishing. A loud boom followed almost instantly. We were all praying that we would make it back to the truck.
We still go up to the spot and fish walleyes at least ten times a season, but nowadays the weather is always our number one topic of discussion.
