THE FISHING MISSION

By Tim Worel (Staff Writer)

My friend Scotty and I picked out a lake to fish that was West of Grand Rapids, MN. The lake had no main roads going to it so we decided to take a small duck boat and a garden cart to help us get it to the lake. We had gone down a logging road for about an hour when the road ended. At that point, we figured that we were about 2 miles from the lake.

There was a small trail going into the woods and we thought that we would scout it out before we got the boat ready. We walked for about 1/2 hour and we found the lake. We had a little swamp to go through, but it didn't look too bad! When we got back we got the boat ready and started down the trail. After readjusting the cart 3 times and 1 1/2 hours later we were at the lake. I found that when you sweat the mosquito spray comes off. It was very hot and it was no fun.
We finally got to fishing and they weren't biting. We did manage to catch about 6 big crappies that were about 1 pound apiece. We also caught a couple small Northerns. We decided to head back to the truck and set up camp so we would be able to get up early in the morning and try again. Scotty's nickname is "Cookie" and he sure can cook up some tasty crappies!!!
I woke up with "Cookie" cooking eggs and bacon and the sky looking like rain. After having a good feast we headed down the trail. When we got to the lake it had just started to sprinkle a little bit. We were wondering if it was all worth it! I was not looking forward to getting the boat out. Right away we started catching bass with power baits. It was unbelievable every 3 casts we would catch a bass. We had a contest to see how many we caught in a row. I had 6 catches in a row. Scotty had 9 catches in a row. The bass were averaging from 2 1/2 to 5 pounds. We had a couple big ones on but they got away. At 10:30 a.m. we were out of power bait. It then started to rain a little harder so we decided to get out of there. We knew that we would have plenty of time to get the boat out. When we got back to camp everything was soaked and including the both of us. We both thought "never again". After packing up camp we started to head back to the cities. We had driven for about an hour and then we thought " it wasn't that bad after all." Maybe next year! Maybe!