I woke up when Edward left, but only because I saw a flashlight beam. I went back to sleep immediately and didn't arise until shortly after dawn.
This day was the day of poor choices. We loitered around and didn't take the boat out until ten-thirty. There were two park attendants on duty--one came by and told us that we couldn't park the boat trailer in our camping spot even though there was plenty of room for it. He said to put it across the road in the overflow parking spots, which would have required us running an extension cord across the road. I believe he also reported that we were leaking water on the ground. Ed replaced a washer, easily fixing the leak, but was having trouble re-hooking the hose for some reason. And a second, different park attendant came by and helped out. And he also said that the boat trailer was fine where it was--it wasn't hurting anything, wasn't in anyone's way, and wasn't on the grass. Exactly what we thought.
But we were already hooking up to go fish. We launched the boat into a calm-ish lake under a cloudy sky. Since we'd planned to pull the boat up to shore in front of the campsite, and store it there for the night, I went ahead and drove the truck and trailer back to camp. Then out we went to fish.
Not thirty or forty yards out, we found a mess of fish on the sonar. No structure or anything, just a big concentration of fish. We fished that area for a while, catching a few small ones, and then we went out further, past the boat ramp. But I could be wrong about that. After a while, though, it came up a squall. The wind and waves were seriously scary--wind out of the north and thunderclouds up there, too. We gave up, took the boat to camp and tied it up, then headed inside in a peppering rain.
The waves were occasionally hopping (I shan't say "lashing"-that would be an exaggeration) over the stern of the boat. And we discovered that one one of the two bilge pumps
wasn't working. I think the other was working, at least at first, but I don't remember the details. In any event, Ed was scared to leave the boat in the water all night with the wind whipping up waves and it looking like a major thunderstorm was about to hit any minute.
So we took a short break indoors, watching the wind and waves. Eventually, we decided to load the boat back on the trailer for the night. But it had stopped raining, so we took the fishing gear with us and prepared to sneak in an hour or two of fishing first.
But the boat wouldn't move. Ed had pulled it up as far on the bank as he could, and the northerly wind pushed it farther ashore. It was stuck in the mud, as firm as a cork in a champagne bottle. Pushing and shoving accomplished not one bit of motion. After a frustrated minute or two, eventually we got the idea of shoving the bow to the north, which put the boat sideways to the wind and loosened the grip of the mud on the stern. Then we could move it, slowly and fighting for every inch, directly away from shore. A kindly neighbor came to help, too, but we would have gotten it without him.
So...I drove the trailer back to the ramp and parked it, and out we went fishing. The fish failed to cooperate, even when Ed found a likely spot or two. I believe we caught a catfish, a sun perch, and a white bass. But the rain started peppering down--it would rain enough to make us miserable, then stop and pretend to clear up, then start raining again. Eventually we'd had enough...and even though the wind was dying down and the the lake becoming smooth, we loaded the boat back onto the trailer.
Back at camp, Ed fixed the barbecued chicken and I walked dogs, I guess. I really don't remember what I was doing for all that time. Not writing notes for the blog, for sure.
I could live here:
When Edward arrived, we took him out fishing for a bit. He caught nothing and I doubt if he had a very good time, because we weren't able to find enough fish on the sonar to show him what they looked like on the display. I had to rig up another rod, which took awhile, and almost immediately I lucked into a nice bass who managed to break the line and lose every bit of my rigging. I didn't even get him into the boat, so I'll never know what sort of bass he was.
When I'd re-rigged a second time, it was nearing time to go in. We loaded the boat on the trailer, and then I decided to run back to camp instead of riding in the truck. Since I could take a short cut through the grass while they had to go far around on the winding road, I thought I could beat them back. But I was wearing swim shoes--old, worn-out swim shoes--and the gravel hurt my feet enough to slow me down even slower than normal. I made it back at the same time as they did, but only because they got delayed by a stopped truck.
In any event, it felt good to run without dogs for once in a while. I was pleasantly tired at bedtime.
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