Fishing 107

................fishing came and went for the next few years. It was slow going in the summer of 2002. I spent more and more time studying for the college courses I was taking and less time on the water. Tom hooked up with Jake and together they fished for muskie. If not at the lake, I would take a week trip away from Fargo and the lake as well as do some genealogy field trips and attend reunions. There had to be a solution. There had to be a better plan.

The cabbage had died off, a boat called the Night Owl had fished out all the big pike in the Gap using sucker baits and allowing the big fish to swallow this big bait. Fishing for finger size perch was not my idea of fun.

I stated I was going to get a little boat with a little motor and go to little lakes and fish for little fish. Why not? Nothing was going on at Leech. I was bored. Tom asked if he could come along. OF course he could come along. Now, the first thing I had to do was get a vehicle I could accomplish this plan with. The SUV would pull 1,500 pounds. I needed something with beef.

I had said to Tom the fall before that I was going to by a yellow truck. He figured I should rent a vehicle to see if that is what I really wanted. I was past wondering, I was looking. The truck came to be in March of 2003. Next, I needed a boat.

We went to the boat store. I wrote a check for a boat, motor, and trailer. A fourteen foot with a 25 hp motor should be just fine for shaking off the trailer. The guy told me to hang on to my check for a minute. While he was gone, Tom stated we needed a stainless steel prop. The salesman couldn't give me a 25 hp motor with a stainless prop. The check got tore up and we left. I would find a used boat in a storage shed. Danged if it didn't leak. We sold it to our neighbor. He fixed it and resold it.

My idea was getting away from me. We had a 25 horse motor, which was new, but no boat. NOT MY TURN. Tom bought a 16 foot Lund and we put the 25 on it. My dream was not to have equipment; but that wasn't Tom's vision. He needed a fish finder, a depth finder, a trolling motor....and so it got decked out. The 25 didn't get us up on plane. We were fishing with it but it wasn't just what he felt we needed. He traded in the 25 for a 40 and still didn't feel like that is what we should have. The forty would go back and he would pick up a 50 horse with a stainless prop. Since the trade happened in the fall, he would spend hours on lakes near Fargo just getting some time on the engine.

This was not a little boat with a little engine for little lakes with little fish. It became the Saturday--go--on--an--adventure--boat, whether it be the Mississippi River, rice choked lakes, even parts of Leech Lake we would drive to and launch. The idea paid off, there were fish to catch. We were catching.

By this time I had won numerous rods and reels and started the finesse of fishing. I had caught enough little bass on Hovde to be interested in fishing for bass. I bought my first Fenwick. Now I had numerous loves beyond my children and Tom, I had Fenwick!..............................