A weekend on the lakes

A weekend on the lakes

Pic: Alivia and Abigail on South Twin Lake:

By Allan Olson

For the most part, our weekend was spent at or near home. It certainly was nice to not need to go out to socialize or work, and just stay close to the house.

I stayed in bed until past 8:30 on Saturday morning, a rarity for me. Normally my internal clock says it’s time to get up at 6 a.m., and I have a hard time convincing my internal snooze alarm to leave me alone. I guess I must have needed the extra Zs, because I was able to shut that clock down and get some sleep.

Eventually we got into gear with some summer cleaning around the house, trying to remove stuff that has accumulated over the winter and other stuff that we had just hung onto over the last few years. Once my vehicle was fully loaded, I headed for the dump. There was no way I was just going to move it to the garage or another room “...just in case” we might need it again. 

Marcus (left) Jayce (cousin) and Nikolai after a good haul of fish.

I tried to take a nap in the afternoon, as I was feeling tired. After kicking up dust from all that stuff, my allergy meds were making me drowsy. My nap attempt was short-lived, however. Before long Marcus showed up to ask me a question about something, even though he could clearly see that I was working hard at taking a nap. With my nap spoiled, I decided to get up and start being productive again.

That evening, we decided to take the canoes we had borrowed for our camping trip for a practice run. We headed out to find a lake for paddling. Our first choice was North Twin Lake; however, we found the public access quite busy, so we opted for South Twin instead. When we got there, one boat was packing up and another was just loading up at the landing, leaving the entire lake to us. 

We unloaded all three canoes, assigned personnel to each, and started paddling around the lake. Not literally, mind you, because frankly, we adults are out of shape and the kids are inexperienced at such things. We switched partners a couple of times, with the kids taking turns at steering. I made two other trips out, once each with Nikolai and Alivia. It was a great time, and we even had a loon pop up alongside the canoe once. Unfortunately, it submerged almost as fast as it had surfaced, and since I am not brave enough to bring my good camera out on even the boat, much less a canoe, I wasn’t able to get a high quality close-up photo.

I slept in again on Sunday. That makes two days in a row! Then once again it was back to more of the same – cleaning out a room downstairs that we had just been storing stuff in, including clothes that were too small or too big, and other miscellaneous stuff. We battled with the girls on getting their room thoroughly cleaned – we were getting tired of their “just-shove-everything-in-the-closet-or-under-the-bed-or-anywhere-but-where-it-actually-belongs” cleaning. Finally, in frustration, I brought in a big garbage bag and started stuffing things in it at random. That set them to tears, but I was fed up. I left the room and the garbage bag, and about 30 minutes later the boys and I were hooking up to the boat and going fishing.

Again, our lake of choice was North Twin Lake (in Beltrami County), primarily because it’s close to home, with a public access, and I had been provided with tips on a couple of good spots to try for fishing.

We launched the boat and headed across the lake, anchoring in the area I was informed about. In the boat with me was my nephew Jayce, Nikolai and Marcus. After getting everyone’s hook tipped with a leech, I didn’t even get a chance to get my line in the water before Marcus was cranking one in. This is a kid who doesn’t even like fishing, but has been wanting to go out. He also isn’t too crazy about my little boat, much preferring grandpa’s pontoon. But he was still the first one to catch a fish. After that, he lost a couple more, and then lost interest in even trying all together. “I don’t want to fish,” he said. I handed him my pole a couple times while I helped the other two boys out, and all he had to say was, “Hurry up; I don’t want to catch another one.”

The next one to hook a fish was his cousin Jayce, followed by me and then Nikolai. After that I got on a roll, landing them left and right. I got way ahead in the count compared to the boys, but then Nikolai’s line caught fire. Then Jayce managed to get the line on his pole tangled, so I offered him mine. I had a little ice fishing pole along just for backup. I tried getting that line in the water a few times, but then Jayce got hot and started hooking them right along with Nikolai, Prior to giving up my pole I was only one or two behind Nikolai, but I was soon left in the dust, as he just kept cranking them in.

I informed the boys that we would quit at about 8 p.m. (after our 6:25 start), and that turned out about right because we ran out of bait. Nikolai didn’t want to give up and tried an artificial lure for a bit. We pulled up anchor at about 8:10, and we were on the way home by 8:30. Catching them was the easy part; cleaning them – not so much. First of all, there were a lot of fish. Second, my cleaning experience is limited to a whole lot of watching and not so much doing. In fact,  I can only recall one time that I’ve ever actually cleaned a fish myself. But it needed to be done. My wife laughed at me (rightfully so I guess) when I suggested she do it.

During the cleaning process, which took about 90 minutes (including clean-up), I cleaned about 30 sunfish/bluegills. As you might expect, I managed to totally butcher a few. The kids came up with names for some of them, and even played with them while they awaited their turn on the butcher’s block. Marcus named one fish “Bobby Fillet,” which I thought it was kind of funny. Abigail thought it was funny because she knew that was a chef on a cooking show; Marcus had no clue that was the name of a chef.

In all, it was another fun weekend in Northern Minnesota, even though the girls took basically the whole time to thoroughly clean their room and so missed out on the fishing because of it.

This week we are looking forward to a good time with my family and my brother’s family vacationing along the St. Croix River. It should be a fun few days of making memories and taking pictures.

Enjoy your summer, and be sure to snap a photo or two to preserve a lifetime of memories. Thanks for reading, and have a great week! Feel free to drop me a line at cltimes1@arvig.net or stop by the office for a visit.