The perfect trip

Booked a date with RainyDaze Guide Service
for Aug. 6 way back in the first week of June.
Dealing with the anticipation was a daily struggle.

I haven't taken many real vacations.  Maybe none since I was in high school when my mom took me and a friend for a few days on a fishing "resort" in Minnesota.  In my early days in the Air Force, most of my leave time was spent visiting either my mom or dad for a week or so. I don't recall doing much -- just hanging out while they were at work and maybe doing something if my visit was on a weekend.

When I started autocrossing in the late 1990s, my vacation time was mainly spent going to autocrosses (taking off a Friday and/or Monday to sandwich a weekend) or travelling to the SCCA Solo National Championships (in Topeka, Kansas, and eventually Lincoln, Nebraska) from 1998 to 2011. 

Then when I became "my own boss," I couldn't take any time off except for the 2014 Solo Nationals.

Solo Nationals is fun because of autocrossing and seeing friends, but it doesn't really seem like a vacation. Drive cross country (usually just stopping for gas/food and spending the night at a random hotel along the interstate), stress about how well you're going to perform in competition, trying to get in course walks, work assignments, etc., etc., ... it's almost like real work except for not getting paid to be there.

So other than a day or two here and there, I figured I haven't taken a legit vacation since 1998.

That's a long time.

This year, I decided to join Karen on one of her annual road trips and arranged for a fishing trip with RainyDaze Guide Service on Rainy Lake bordering Minnesota and Canada.  I flew into Casper, Wyoming, on Friday Aug. 2, and she picked me up at the airport.  We headed north and arrived at Devils Tower just before sundown.

Devils Tower just before sunset.

The next day, we went to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.

Markers of fallen 7th Cavalry soldiers.

This is a place I have always wanted to visit since I was a kid. The teaching back in the 1980s was that Custer was a hero, but over time, the narrative has changed. Indians wanting to be left alone and live on the land they've called home for hundreds of years, and white people not wanting to have that for some dumb reason.

Anyway, enough with the politics. As much as has been written about the battle, it was really interesting to see the landscape in person and get a feel for how everything played out.  Along one of the trails, there's an illustration showing where Custer first sighted the Indian encampment on the Little Bighorn River from a peak 14 miles away! The peak was clearly visible. "Big Sky Country" indeed.

The next day we went to Theodore Roosevelt National Park and saw more unbelievable landscapes.  And bison.

Bison herd at Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Finally on Monday, it was off to Rainy Lake.  We cross-trekked through North Dakota, into Minnesota and stayed the night at International Falls.

Personal best walleye, 26 inches.  Probably will
be awhile before I can have a chance at topping that.

Tuesday morning, we met up with Chris Zahn of RainyDaze Guide Service and hit the water cruising across the border into Canada on his Ranger boat powered by a super-quiet four-stroke motor.

Before we started, I told Chris I expected to catch my personal best walleye.  His response was something like, "Uh ... OK?"  Then I told him my biggest walleye was just 15 inches from the Upper Potomac. He seemed to relax after that.

We started fishing in aboot (See what I did there? Since we were in Canada.) 30-feet of water with the bottom mostly flat.  But we saw fish on the Garmin thingie hugging the bottom.  Canada regulates live minnows can't be used as bait, but Chris had bought minnows the night before and "iced" them. He rigged a dead minnow on a jighead like a swimbait, and we dropped them over the side of the boat.

For about 20 minutes, fish weren't sniffing at the minnows. Even though the Garmin sonar thingie showed fish on the bottom of the lake.  We could even see our jig/minnow fluttering by.

Karen with her personal best walleye.

Then a fish bit my jig/minnow. Very subtle bite, moderate tension on the other end of the line.  I set the hook, and it felt like a good fish. Chris said there might be northern pike mixed in with the walleye, and that's what it felt like because Potomac walleye fight like wet socks.

The fish pulled drag, and it battled for about a minute.  Then the fish got close to the surface, and the shiny gold reflecting from the sun indicated it was a walleye.

A big walleye.

After netting it, Chris measured it just a tick below 26 inches (aboot seven pounds).

He said a lot of people consider 28 inches as trophy size for a walleye, so probably equivalent to catching an 18-inch Potomac river smallmouth.

No fish after that, and that was the pattern for the day.  Chris found fish on the Garmin, we would catch one or two -- if any -- right away, and then the bite went cold. Then move on to the next spot.

I managed to land five walleye.  Karen also caught her personal best -- 19 inches.  Her previous best was 17 inches, also from the Upper Potomac.

Around 2 p.m., Chris asked if we wanted to try for smallmouth bass. Oh hell yeah, let's go!  We motored to shallower water with rock formations barely visible below the water's surface.  The weapon of choice here was a four-inch plastic worm "wacky rigged" with a jighead.

One of Karen's smallmouth bass.

The first fish in smallmouth bass territory was a 16-incher that I caught -- which, honestly, fought just as hard as the 26-inch walleye.  We moved around to a few places landing a few fish here and there.  While I caught more walleye, Karen got the most smallmouth (five).  One in particular was pretty funny to watch.  Just before she took the worm out of the water, the bass swam by the lure.  She lifted the lure out of the water, lowered it back in, and the smallmouth turned back and chomped the lure.

Because of Canadian regulations, we could only keep one walleye per person.  And they had to be under 17 inches (or over 27 inches).  No big deal -- we weren't there to keep a bunch of fish.  Chris filleted our eater-size walleye, and you betcha we cooked them up a couple days later on the BioLite stove camping in da U.P.  Just sprinkled with Adobo seasoning, fer sure the fish were delicious.

And then we went to Da Beauty League games in Edina, Minnesota, the next day, then up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan after that where we dined on the walleye and purple crack Doritos.

Finally on Saturday, we camped at a KOA campground just south of Cleveland.  There was a pond on site, and I couldn't resist throwing a Whopper Plopper as the sun was going down that night.  Tricked one little largemouth bass.  Then Sunday morning, I tricked three more largemouth using a Reaction Innovations Swimbait and a Z-Man Finesse TRD worm.  Actually had four other largemouth bass hooked, but they tricked me by escaping before getting to the shore.  Although the fish were sub 12 inches, it was fun to use river smallmouth lures to catch pond largemouth.

KOA campground largemouth.

Already thinking about what to do next year.  Snake River?  Columbia River?  San Diego lakes and fabricating lies?  This might have been the perfect trip, but I think there are more out there.

Karen has her pictures from the road trip here.  For more of my pictures, click on the bison: