My propensity for being a homebody is well-documented.
Not to get defensive about it or anything but, home is just an incredibly special place for me.
I’ve lived in Sheboygan Falls for almost my entire life and, though my town and surrounding community is relatively small, I have never had an issue with finding the appropriate doses of comfort and adventure here. So many of the people, places, memories, and things I hold dear are easily accessible and readily available in abundance.
But, throughout my life, I’ve also learned the importance of fresh surroundings. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to be a well-rounded person if you only stay within the confines of familiarity your entire life. Every once in a while, I force myself to ponder this truth.
Back in late December, when the snow was flying and the wind was whipping outside, I found myself in my basement texting my old college buddy, JT, a Minnesota native who now calls Fargo home. We exchange messages several times per week, so I can’t recall what sparked this particular conversation but, somewhere along the line, someone floated the idea of getting together for a fishing trip.
While the details are fuzzy, and as much as I seemingly avoid travel, I’m sure it didn’t take much convincing. Heck, for all I know, it may have even been my idea.
I love fishing and I don’t get to see JT very often—once a year, at best. Being able to combine these opportunities made this trip a no-brainer.
Regardless of how it came to be, before long, we had a plan in place: I would spend a couple days in Minnesota at JT’s parents’ cabin, enjoying his new Caymas boat and chasing big bass. Then, he would return home with me for his first crack at the salmon run.
In the roughly nine months between its inception and the scheduled dates, the trip occasionally came up in conversations between JT and I. Just a couple weeks before our meet-up, JT informed me that he would be checking out some other lakes in his area to gather some more information on the bite, hoping to maximize our time on the water.
JT is a hell of a bass fisherman. Considering the combination of his knowledge, skill, and new toys, I had the utmost confidence that he would be able to put us on fish. And though effectively fishing the salmon run isn’t exactly a high-percentage endeavor, I had a strong belief in my ability to return the favor.
For a while, it seemed like the universe had other ideas. In the days leading up to our trip, things started to come unraveled on both ends of the equation.
My phone buzzed one morning, less than two weeks out from the beginning of our adventure. It was JT.
“Dude, I went fishing today and I’m having trolling motor issues. Of course, right before [you] come,” his message read.
He told me he planned to take the boat to the dealer for a deep-dive into the finicky device. I assured him that we had found action in the past with way less equipment than we would be in possession of this time around and that I wasn’t concerned.
As I awaited his update, I was starting to have worries of my own. Water levels in my local rivers were quite low and we hadn’t had a measurable rainfall in over two weeks. My scouting trips yielded little, if anything, in the way of salmon activity and the forecast was dry and warm, about the last two things you want when you’re waiting on salmon to enter the river.
As summer turned to fall, I remained steadfast in my belief that, at the very least, I would be able to show JT some salmon. Now I was starting to wonder if that was even in the cards.
Complicating matters further was the fact that the salmon guide I had booked as an insurance policy sent me a message saying he had messed up his knee on his last day in Alaska, where he was guiding during the summer months, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to run any trips back home.
Oh, and the Twins game we were supposed to catch on the way back to Wisconsin was in danger of being rained out, if the weather forecast was even remotely accurate.
While I did my best to remain positive, none of these factors were doing anything to calm my anxiety about the logistics of this trip or my dislike of traveling in general.
As my departure drew nearer, some bits of good news started trickling in. My guide felt up to powering through his trips, JT was able to get his boat back from the dealer (though questions around the trolling motor remained), and we received the most significant rainfall we’d seen in nearly a month.
Early on a Friday morning in late September, I hopped in my truck and strapped-in for the 8-and-a-half-hour drive to Park Falls, Minnesota armed with only a spinning rod, a bait caster, and a half-dozen baits, JT insisted he would provide me with everything else I needed. The trip was uneventful and relatively smooth (as these trips usually end up being, despite what my anxiety tries to tell me).
The last leg of the drive on Highway 64 is filled with stunning scenery, especially in fall. I kept thinking to myself, “this is truly God’s country right here.”
It’s a good thing too because, in this part of the world, driving 15 miles can take nearly 35 minutes. That’s what happens when you hit a different body of water every hundred yards, I was in the Land of 10,000 Lakes after all.
Upon my arrival, JT and I immediately hopped in his truck and brought the boat to one the launches on Potato Lake, the lake his family’s cabin resides on. I didn’t even get my suitcase out of the truck. We wanted to make the most of the daylight that remained.
For all of the success JT has enjoyed on this particular lake, we seem to struggle to replicate it whenever we are together. This certainly isn’t a knock against my long-time friend. Potato Lake just is, in my experience, simply a daunting body of water to dissect. It is structurally diverse, weather-dependent, and seasonally-driven. There are plenty of fish, to be sure, but it feels like they can be anywhere in the 2,100 acres at any given time.
In a couple of hours, we managed just three fish: a smallmouth bass, a rock bass, and a small pike. It was windy and the trolling motor seemingly only worked when it felt like it, making proper positioning a challenge. Honestly, it just felt good to be on the board and it was great to catch-up with an old friend.
We got the boat back on the trailer in short order and headed to the cabin for some homemade chicken and wild rice hot dish. There are few things in this world that compare to a fresh meal cooked by mom, made with plenty of love, after a long day. I don’t care how old you are or whose mom it is, those types of dinners simply taste better. It couldn’t have been more delicious.
We capped the night with little bit of foosball before hitting the hay.
“Man, I really don’t know how the salmon fishing is going to be,” I mentioned as the ball clanked against the boards of the foosball table.
“Dude, we have to get through tomorrow first,” JT quickly responded. I could sense the night’s low fish count had him feeling a little bit of pressure, even if I thought it was unwarranted.
I recalled that interaction during a phone call with my wife an hour or so later.
“That’s the thing about these trips,” she noted. “You guys are really concerned about showing each other a good time”
I reflected on her response as I was drifting off to sleep. That’s when I came to a realization that changed my outlook on this entire trip: it’s not pressure we were feeling. It was passion.
Our fishing adventures give JT and I the opportunity to share things we love with a person we love. There’s a lot of energy and drive in situations like that and it has little or nothing to do with proving to the other person that we are a worthy angler.
The next morning we were on the road before sunup en route to Stony Lake, a roughly 40-minute drive from the cabin. JT gave me the low-down on this spot the night before. The plan was to fish the shallow rims around the perimeter of the lake, using a variety of tactics.
As we pulled-in over the hill to the scenic boat landing, we were greeted by the presence of a single truck without a trailer behind it—always a curious sight at a launch. JT explained to me that the vehicle was probably occupied by a volunteer who was there to help slow the spread of invasive species and educate us on proper mitigation strategies.
Sure enough, as soon as we parked and began preparing the boat for a day on the water, an older gentleman, probably is his late 60s or early 70s appeared out of the the truck and greeted us with a hearty “good morning!”
He asked us a variety of questions about where the boat had been recently, where we were planning to go, if there were any fish in the live well, etc and recorded our responses on a tablet. He also visually inspected the boat and trailer for signs of hitchhikers.
After that, we shot the breeze about the lake and fishing in general. He had a warmth about him that got our day off to a positive start.
As we parted, the man wished us good luck and we hit the water.
“Man, that guy must really love fishing,” I said to JT.
“What do you mean?,” he asked.
“Think about it,” I said. “He gave up his entire Saturday morning of fishing just so he can talk to the handful of people show up in the hope of protecting his local lakes.”
The sky was filled with a solid ceiling of light gray clouds as far as the eye could see. JT was confident that finding bites wouldn’t be a struggle and he was quickly proven to be correct.
Strikes came quickly and steadily, nothing chaotic. Seemingly every time JT tossed out his top-water bait, there was a bass ready to snap at the offering. We just had a little trouble getting them to stick.
A few hours had passed and we had boated a respectable number of fish, including an 18-inch Smallmouth JT fooled with a black hair jig.
We motored to a new spot, some shallow weeds on the edge of a drop off. Since the trolling motor decided to play nice, I liked our odds of working this structure effectively.
The activity started to pick up, each of us starting to regularly encounter fish in contrast to the dinking and dunking we were doing earlier.
All of a sudden, I heard JT react to a bite. I looked up to the front of the boat to see his rod doubled over and a big smile on his face. Though I couldn’t experience the fight firsthand, I knew this fish was different than anything we had come across up until this point.
I grabbed the net and made my way up to the casting deck. JT’s drag was singing loudly. This fish was either large or angry, potentially both.
The fish had not yet shown itself to us when the fight came to an abrupt halt. There was clearly still tension on the line, but JT couldn’t make any progress. Now my mind was really spinning. What on earth had he hooked into?
JT got on the trolling motor and moved the boat directly over the point where the line had dug in. Glancing into the water, we both noted the thickness of the weeds. Had the fish pulled the old switcheroo?
Eventually, JT regained his leverage and a pile of weeds ascended from the bottom of the lake. Even though there were no obvious signs of life, I decided to net the formidable clump of green mass, just in case.
I brought the net into the boat and as we dug through the vegetation in search of his bait, a massive largemouth bass appeared, the hair jig still firmly in the roof of its mouth. We both erupted into a disjointed and boisterous celebration of hugs, high-fives, expletives, and whatever the hell else came to our minds in this moment of pure joy.
This fish was a tank—an absolute unit. Far and away to biggest largemouth I had ever seen in-person.
We quickly busted out the scale. 4.18 pounds.
I was in awe. I am well aware that largemouth bass can grow much heavier, but not where I’m from.
“That’s it, we have to get you on one of these hair jigs,” said JT almost immediately after the fish was released.
Even after catching one of his biggest fish of the season, JT’s first thought was how he could get me a cut of the action. That’s love, right there.
After what I had just witnessed, I wasn’t about to turn down the opportunity to start chucking the day’s hottest bait. I enjoyed almost immediate success. The fish started coming one-after-another, with bites on almost every cast. We finally had them dialed-in.
Before long, armed with my own black hair jig, I was smashing personal-bests. I pulled-in a smallmouth that was nearly 3.5 pounds and a largemouth that was a touch over 3.25.
As the afternoon set-in, we decided to take our newfound knowledge and apply it to some spots we had fished earlier in the morning. That damn jig continued to be the ticket, wherever we went.
JT asked me how I wanted to spend our remaining time on the water. There was another lake he wanted to try but, he was hesitant to leave fish to find fish, just as I was.
We chose to stick it out on Stony Lake a little longer and every time we discussed packing up, one of us would get a fish on the following cast.
Ultimately, we did opt for a change of scenery. We decided to load up and head to Baby Lake, a place JT had never been and one that he admitted he probably wouldn’t get to this year if we didn’t go on this particular day.
I had a hard time believing we would find green pastures but, isn’t optimism what eternally drives a dedicated fisherman?
Nathan Woelfel Outdoors 