"Stephen M.H. Lawrence" wrote in message
link.net...

Let's not forget the *superb* fishing. On Friday, I'm off for 3 days of
fishing
on Lake Pepin. The walleyes have spawned (hopefully), and will be moving
in to the shallows. If luck is on my side, we'll have some tasty fillets
in
the
deep freeze (minus a couple kept fresh for lunch on Sunday).

Hey, good luck! Hope you get a bunch of them. I was down by Lake Pepin last
month and saw about a half-dozen bald eagles in the area. Walleye, now that
is some great eating-- for some reason, I've never had too much luck
catching them. Maybe it is because I try to avoid the premiere walleye lake
in central Minnesota, Mille Lacs, because it seems like every other
fisherperson and their entire extended family is on that lake from May to
November, and no one's telling where they're biting. Bah.

My star catch was a 7 lb. largemouth bass that I caught out of a lake just
north of Bemidji. That was some fun. It took 45 minutes for me to tire that
guy out, and I was only using 8 lb. test line! It bit me for my trouble.
Bass are great fighters, so much fun to catch, and they can be good eating
if you keep the smaller ones and cook 'em fresh. No scaling and just remove
the backbone, voila, you're good to go.

So many of my childhood memories have to do with fishing. You almost can't
help that if you grow up here. I was raised in St. Paul, close to the
Mississippi, so fishing the Old Muddy was a staple activity on many weekends
of our young lives in those pre-Internet, pre-VCR and pre-computer game
days.

We used to catch catfish, carp and buffalo fish out of the Mississippi.
Those things would bite on anything, and I mean anything, like even pieces
of tinfoil. My dad would lend us some of his fishing equipment (usually the
crap that got stuck to the bottom of his tackle box) but insisted that we
leave his good lures* alone if we were going catfishing. So we'd hop on our
bikes and start off downhill to the river, our fishing poles strapped to our
backs next to backpacks filled with lunches, pop, sunscreen, OFF bug
repellent, and a can of Green Giant corn kernals. We would string a bunch of
corn kernals on a hook, toss it into the river and voila, a big, ugly ten
pounder'd be on your line before you know it. After several hours of landing
big ones from the Old Muddy, we'd hop back on our bikes and head uphill all
the way home; sunburnt, mosquito-bitten and full of fish stories for our
folks. Life's good here, you betcha!

Jackie
Who is really looking forward to Minnesota's Holy Day of Obligation: Fishing
Opener.

* Rapalas.