This past weekend my wife Jean and I had a chance to head north and spend some time with two of our grandsons. Brian’s son Trevor and Brad’s son Dylan went with us for the weekend. We had good weather the first part of the weekend but Sunday was cold, rainy and windy for the most part. That little bit of inclement weather didn’t keep the boys from fishing on our lake however.

On Saturday we decided to head to Jesse Lake which is just a little bit south of our place. Once at the access I knew right away that this was going to be an experience. There was a line of boats waiting to launch at the access and after waiting patiently for our turn we dropped the boat in and were off to find the fish. Unfortunately we were only about 20 minutes into fishing before the motor just up and quit. Plan “B” was put into effect and we fished with the electric trolling motor and drifted the remainder of the time.

At the suggestion of Dylan we decided to anchor and do a little jigging and slip-bobber fishing. Trevor and I soon realized why Dylan had suggested it because he started reeling in some nice perch one after another. We soon began to wonder if he was going to share the catching with us. Eventually we were all catching fish and by the time we decided we’d had enough we had to wait quite a spell for our turn to take our boat out. I’ve fished a lot of openers in all parts of our state but this was just plain nuts! For every two boats loading there were two more waiting to launch. This was non-stop all day long.

The word must have gotten out that the walleye were biting but without the big motor the strong wind pretty much limited us to what area we could fish. Dylan was the only one of us to catch a walleye but we still had enough fish for a nice meal – and it was mighty tasty!

Now our lake is only 42 acres which is pretty small and when we bought the land it was understood that there were no fish in it. The day that I closed the deal I drove to the lake beforehand and did a little experimenting with just a jig and twister tail. After getting a couple of nice “bumps’ I was convinced that there had to be some sort of fish in the lake and that was all I wanted. After a few years of catching perch they seemed to disappear but we eventually found that there were some nice crappie in the lake to take their place.

When we got back to the cabin the boys couldn’t wait to fish our lake. When we had finished cleaning the fish they put the boat in and started fishing.

After fishing for a short time they came back to the cabin with a couple of nice bluegills to show us. Trevor seems to have a knack for finding the fish on any body of water. He said there weren’t many crappies to be found but these nice bluegills were attacking their bait.

The boys spent the rest of that day and evening fishing our little lake, and they caught a lot of fish. Trevor caught a couple of dandy crappies and

Dylan landed the largest bluegill, which was definitely one of the bigger ones I’ve seen come out of our lake.

When it came time to clean the fish Trevor decided to go through the basket and release some of the smaller ones, which were still good-sized fish.

Because they were in a basket they were lively and healthy. He said he wanted to keep just enough for a meal and that would be good. This tells a person a lot about someone that will be spending a lot of his time using our outdoor resources. He respects the environment and doesn’t want to abuse it.

Sadly there were a group of people staying at our neighbors cabin that caught a lot of fish and as far as anyone could tell they never released a single fish no matter what the size. Their basket was heaping and that was what they tried to do every time they were on the lake. Although they most likely weren’t breaking any laws it’s still hard to watch people take that many fish out of that small lake when a 15-year old has enough respect for it to release a lot more fish than he keeps.

Sunday afternoon was rainy and we decided to drive to a few remote lakes in the area and do a little casting from shore. This is one of my favorite things to do when I’m up there and it was quite a departure from the mess we encountered the day before at Jesse Lake. Most of the lakes had one or two boats on them and some had none. Maybe the fish weren’t biting on these lakes but I have visited these lakes before and it’s usually about the same. With the low water on most area lakes it can be pretty tough to launch a bigger boat on some of them.

The last evening Trevor and Dylan, who like to be the ones rowing the boat, took Grandma out for a little cruise on the lake. She fished and in that short period of time caught three fish. Dylan really likes rowing the boat, and I’m sure Trevor likes that because he can spend all his time fishing.

When the weekend was over and the fishing was done we were heading home when Dylan asked us to tell our favorite weekend experience. I said it was spending time with two of my grandsons, Grandma said it was going out fishing with them, Dylan said it was catching all those nice fish on our lake and Trevor said that it was checking out all of those different lakes.

I also think that he managed to catch a fish at just about every lake we went to.

Even though motor trouble put my big boat on the sidelines we managed to make the most of it and turn it into a very good weekend. Once again it was a great time spent making more family memories.