Wednesday, August 19th, 2020

I just got back from a fun long weekend up at Cass Lake with the boys.  Friday night after work I took Nolan and Maxwell up to grandma Becky's place in Mason City for a quick visit, and then on Saturday we drove the rest of the way up to Cass Lake, where we met up with Amy, Logan, and Eben.  Amy's friend Emily, her husband Kelly, her dad Steve, and Emily & Kelly's daughter Nora were also up there in a different cabin.  We stayed in Condo #9.  Overall the fishing was slower than in past years, which I will detail below:

On Saturday evening I went out trolling for northern with Eben and Maxwell.  I managed to catch a nice 24 inch northern, but I had to throw it back (the state fishing regulations for that area are to release any northern between 22 and 26 inches).  I was using a green dardevle lure with yellow/black spots on it.  Eben also caught two northerns (14 and 17.5 inches).  We kept the 17.5 inch one of his.

Sunday morning we took our whole gang out fishing for perch.  All combined, we kept 9 perch.  I had 5 keepers (and I caught one other small one that I tossed back).  Maxwell did manage to catch one perch all by himself!  That was his first ever perch.  Nolan was not able to catch anything besides crawfish, which had him a little bummed.  That night I went trolling with Kelly and Steve, but we had no luck.

On Monday morning we caught 7 keeper perch, and I actually caught one Northern while using a minnow while jigging for perch. I had 3 keeper perch.  Most of the luck we had fishing this day (including the Northern) was in Buck Lake.  Of those 7 keeper perch, Nolan, Maxwell, and Logan each managed to catch one all by themselves.  Amy and Eben went trolling for Northern that night.

Tuesday morning our whole crew went out for quite a while but came back with no fish at all (I had caught one small one that I tossed back, and nobody else really even had a nibble).  Eben said that was the first time he could remember during his time up there that he was completely skunked on a fishing outing.  Later on that afternoon I went back out with Eben, and we did a little perch, walleye, and northern fishing.  I managed to catch one perch was all.

So overall, we ended up keeping only 17 perch and two northern.  Personally I kept 9 perch and 1 Northern.  That's quite a big difference from my last trip up there in 2017, when I caught total 39 perch and kept 22 of them.  

Although the fishing was not great for this trip, we did have a lot of fun.  On one of the days I bought passes for my boys and I to use the indoor pool, which they really enjoyed.  On other days the boys played with Amy and Logan on the beach by Stony Point resort.  There was even a trampoline in the water that they played on.  Each night we built a campfire and enjoyed making smores.  We also got the boys some soft serve ice cream, which was really tasty.  Nolan had vanilla, and Maxwell chose cotton candy.

Here I am with my 24 inch Northern before I released him back into the water.

Maxwell, Logan, and Nolan in Condo #9.

Here Maxwell is with one of the perch that he caught all by himself!

 

Tuesday, August 11th, 2020

 Well, it's been a strange couple of days.  Yesterday around 11:00 in the morning the city of Ames completely lost power.  There was a big storm that moved through with straight line winds over 80 mph, and it knocked down tons of trees and power lines.  This actually affected much of central Iowa.  I was at work when this all happened, and after a couple of hours of standing around in the dark our clinic was finally closed.  After I got home I could see that limbs from our neighbor's willow trees were blown everywhere in our yard and theirs.  There were a couple of other neighbors down the street that had entire large trees fall down.  So Elizabeth and I spent a couple of hours helping them pick up branches and move them onto piles.  We spent the rest of the evening at home with candles lighting up the house.  

Today our power did not come back on until 3:35 in the afternoon, so we went over a day without power.  McFarland clinic was still closed due to the power outage, so I did not go to work today... very strange to have a Tuesday off.  I had put a couple of large bags of ice in our deep freezer, and luckily that all stayed frozen enough.  We did have to throw away a few things from our refrigerator (milk, cheese, yogurt, mayo, sour cream), but it wasn't too bad.  

I might as well update the coronavirus numbers, for comparison to my earlier blog posts this year.  So far in the United States there have been 5.15 million confirmed cases and 164 thousand deaths.  In Iowa, there has been 49,339 cases and 940 deaths.  This has been a pretty shitty year.

On a happier note, I am looking forward to taking the boys up to Cass Lake this coming weekend.  We are leaving this Saturday and will come home on Wednesday.