1999
At last! The return. And to Alice Lake, the place where it all started. To say the weather cooperated would be as great an understatement as bumping into God and saying, "Hey, big guy." The entire trip was the smoothest and most enjoyable I'd ever been on. It seemed as if I'd never left!
John caught his 29 incher early on, and I had only one chance to beat him:
I was fishing with my Mike in a place I hadn't been since 1988 (where and when I caught my 33 inch northern and had a lot of luck) and we were doing quite well when we got our lures tangled. I ended up losing not only my lure, but my sinkers and leader as well. We stopped off at Bear Camp which was next to us. We always have called it Bear Camp since Jerry and Danny were attacked by Bears there years ago. I figured, "What the hell?" thinking I had nothing to lose, and I tied my line directly to the lure with the now fabled, "Braun Triple Knot," as I told Mike at the time.
Back out on the water, we saw that my new assembly (or lack there of) wasn't working out too well. Without my sinkers and a leader my lure was just being dragged along the surface of the lake looking like a dead minnow. It lodged itself on top of a lily pad, and Mike and I were just about to reel in and head in for the day when a northern jumped out of the water and swallowed the lure, lillypad, and all!
Without a leader it was very difficult to keep the line tight (and I won't even go into the impossibility of setting the hook), and the argument is still out there of whether the Braun Triple Knot held or not, but this much is certain: after a 10 minute fight I lost another lure. But it was okay. Just like all of the return trip, I had a lot of fun.
I wonder when I'll go back.
