Greetings and Happy Independence Day to you all! May you have great activities planned with family and/or friends.
Last week was very family-oriented. We had all new bodies in Camp, except for Bobby and Jeff who had each been here a zillion years ago and Lee and Cindy and Sonny and Kathy who’ve all been here many times and stay several weeks (yeah!) We had 10 (yes, 10) kids in Camp as well–that’s a lot for us:)
Fishing started a bit slow for everyone. We were warm–mid to high 70’s–and windless. Several guests were struggling with where to go, what to use, etc. Gruper and I headed out to see if we could do any scouting. I guess it was only fair that he had a good day since I’d done so well the previous week.
We did quite well in a short amount of time on 5th Lake. It was a little rough. You may notice that Gruper was dressed for his favorite type of fishing: jigging with one hand and bailing with the other! It did not rain one drop but he needed full rain gear as he operated the boat. We were in 14′ of water and doing our vertical jigging thing. On the way back we spied several of our boats in the 2nd narrows. Turns out they were doing quite well also! The walleye in particular had really turned on in that area, despite bright blue skies. They were a bit shallower, and the guys were drifting through and doing well.
We had a very helpful group of anglers in Camp. Bobby turned out to be quite impressive. He shared many spots with other guests. He caught walleye and perch right here by Camp! His technique was trolling with a shad rap(?) It worked quite well for him. On Friday, July 1, he tacked smallies as that’s the day the size/limits change for them. He also decided that we needed a Wall of Shame in our fish cleaning house and added the first exhibit:
He hacked up his basket with the prop!
Many of our young guests came to fish! We had met Evan and Jake at a sports show earlier this year. We could tell they knew what they were doing. They brought their friend Brock, and these boys fished HARD all week. They were good at finding all species. Brock released a 22″ smallie. Two other young guys, Rhett and Nicholas, also released big smallies. You can see them all on the Conservation Awards Page of our website: www.tallpinescamp.com
The kids were all so well behaved and found ways to keep themselves occupied when they weren’t fishing. Here are a bunch of them posing with a rare find:
Later in the week Rhett and Carter found a teeny, tiny turtle:
Miss Artessa spent A LOT of time in the Lake:
Audrey sported darling green toes (this one’s for you, Mr. Horak):
I think it would be safe to say that the week ended up very well for our anglers. Fishing got better and better each day! We were able to do some conservation education/awareness as well this week, which made it great for us. We will take Chuck’s suggestion to verbalize our expectations instead of just having them in print form in the cabins.Â
We’d like to thank everyone for choosing to make us a family vacation spot last week. It was nice to finally meet Ed, Robin and the boys:) Chuck’s family had a great time and seemed to embrace the family time. Even our new couples and guy group (David, et al) fit right in with our very social group.
I raided Max’s camera. He released a 24″ walleye that you’ll see on the website. He also had some other cool stuff:
That's a deer swimming.
His friend Rusty was glad to see him for a walk one day:
He photoed a particularly good perch catch (with a whitefish!) a couple of weeks ago:
He captured a nice sunset:
It’s nice to see our Camp life through his eyes! Thanks, Max.
I’ll close with a reflection I caught this morning. Have a great 4th and a good week:)
