The Big Storm and the Little Lake

I woke up in my tent and it felt like the humidity was already 70 or 80%. the twenty or so mosquitoes hanging out on my screen were waiting for their breakfast of me I rewarded them with a shot of DEET mosquito spray that I had next to my pillow. They didn't appreciate that much and decided to leave, at least for now. I heard Tim in the tent next door waking up swearing something about his zipper didn't close all the way. "Damn, shit, tent". I had to laugh just a little thinking of Tim stumbling to his tent when I last saw him about 6 hours earlier.. We had a couple beers when we finally got up here last night to celebrate the journey. After the 4 hour drive on the highway from the cities of Sandstone Minnesota and my fishing buddy, Tim, was coming all the way from Minneapolis which is another couple hours if the traffics good.

Then another hour going through 10 miles of gravel logging roads, then a couple more hours of logging trails and all the unpacking, Tim's jeep just barely made it, minus one passenger side mirror. The trail to the lake was overgrown with lots of new trees. After we got our tents set up and sleeping bags installed we had to at least have a couple beers to celebrate, we made it! We were at our favorite baass and northern lake deep into the woods of northern Minnesota and we had made it once again. We couldn't see the lake yet. Not just because of the dark but because we were still two city blocks from the lake, and that's as far as the jeep could go. We will have to walk that tomorrow carrying our float tubes and fishing tackle and maybe a couple beers. We have been here before to this 200 acre lake and every time has been a great fishing adventure. We catch the most and biggest fish of the year and this weekend was hopefully, was going to be the best yet,

I cooked bacon, eggs, and buttered toast in a frying pan over the camp stove for breakfast and now we were ready for some fishing. We packed our poles, tackle, and rubber worms and made our way through the thickets and puddles that surrounded the lake. Once we could see the lake we got our bearings back and looped along the edge of the bog till we got to the beaver damn. There we had a place to blow up the tubes and depart into the main lake. It was a sunny day and the temp was a little hot for being 9:00 AM. But that humidity was a killer and we were both anxious to get into the cool spring water to cool off. The float tubes got filled with air from a portablepump and battery we had brought along. We had learned years before to not rely on human breath to try to fill up those tubes. The last time we did that it almost killed us. So off we paddled with our foot flippers and headed out into the deep dark blue lake.

I pulled my rod and reel off the tube and baited it with a purple rubber worm, I rigged it Carolina style and it wasn't more than 2 casts and I had on a 4 pound largemouth baass jumping out of the water with my worm hanging out of his mouth. "Hell yeah!!!" I yelled and I looked over and I could see Tim had something on his line also. That is why we came I said under my breath. It's a pain but every time we do we forget about all the bugs and the hard work it is to get here and fish here. Well that was what we did for the next three hours, pretty much catching baass after baass and once in a great while, hooking into a monster northern pike. Those guys you need to be a little careful considering the many teeth that could sink your tube if they arn't played the right way. After a couple hours I started to notice some dark clouds moving in from the west. They were the extra dark type that meant some kind of storm was going to be here soon and we were going to get wet, so I got Tim to head back to the beaver damn.

We both had a limit of nice keeper baass on stringers attached to our float tubes which made it a little hard to pick up speed but we made it before the rain started. We pulled the tubes next to the beaver damn and tied them down to the logs the beaver had made his home from and we stood on top and looked to the west. The lake had started getting white caps as the wind kept getting stronger and stronger. The clouds were looking really dark and we had some weird looking white clouds mixed lower than the dark ones so we knew this wasn't going to be good for us. "What's the plan man", Tim asked "I think it's too late to head into the woods" I said. At this time lightning has been hitting dangerously close to us and the wind was blowing hard. "I think I'm just going to go under one of these little pine trees until the storm passes." "Okay, me too" says Tim "but let's space ourselves apart in case one of up has to rescue the other one if they get hit by lightning!" We may need to resuscitate the other guy.

That seemed like a really great idea, or maybe it was the only thing, we could do. Either way we separated. Now it's really storming and I dive for the nearest pine tree. Tim ran about 20 yards and did the same. That storm lasted forever but I'm sure it was only ten minutes or so and when I looked up and saw it heading east past us with just some misty clouds dragging back alongside the trees. The humidity dropped too which felt so much better. We didn't get hit by lightning but we both had felt our hair stick straight up and felt the ground shake with every lightning blast, which there were many. I got up and Tim was pulling himself out of the bog but the good news was we were both okay. We had both somehow made it so once again we had gotten lucky, After collecting our wits it was time to catch some more fish so we headed for the beaver dam and our tubes.

The tubes were a little twisted up with each other but that wasn't that bad, but when we pulled our stringers out of the water the baass only had the their heads left on, the rest of them were shreaded. so much for the two limits of baass we had caught pre-storm that morning. The snapping turtles must have gotten pretty hungry during that storm and they had robbed us of our morning harvest. That wasn't a bad trade after all considering what we had just been through and besides, we knew we could always catch more fish from this little 200 acre lake..