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| The first family campsite of the year! |
Our early summer has been filled with sports, unlike most recent years. Usually, by the beginning of July, we would have been on 3-100 camping trips, but this year we have only been on one. Not that I am complaining, we had a great time at softball, baseball, and soccer practices and games, but it seems strange to say we have only been camping once as a family so far. That one trip was loads of fun, though!
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| I was trying to get a good pic of the sun, but this tree wouldn't get out of my way... |
We stayed at La Salle Lake Recreation Area, which is just a few miles north of Itasca State Park, home of the headwaters of the Mississippi River. La Salle Lake is notable in its own right as being the deepest lake that is wholly within the state of Minnesota. It's something like 215 feet deep, or something like that... I am not sure exactly, since all of my fishing was in about 4 feet of water or less...
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| A fun thing to climb while on vacation, if you aren't deathly afraid of heights or ledges... |
It was a family vacation, which included many extended family members on The Wife's side of the family, so I only fished one evening. That was fine by me; we were having loads of fun doing other things as well. The public shore fishing options on La Salle Lake are all congregated on the north end, so that is where I headed. There is a nice boat launch and a big fishing dock. If I had wanted to I could have done some wading around, as well, but I stuck to dry land.
I headed to the fishing dock first. Not sure what might be swimming around, I tied on a green Gurgler and cast it in towards some reeds. Something that was big enough to create a wake came out from the reeds and nailed within about 2 seconds. It was a big ol' bluegill. That was fun! After that more things came busting out of the reeds to attack my fly, including a medium sized largemouth, several rock bass, and a gigantic pumpkinseed. All of these fish were a hoot to catch, as you can probably imagine.
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| Rock Bass |
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| Big ol' pumpkinseed!!! |
It was getting close to 9pm, although there was still a lot of daylight left at that latitude at that time of the year. But I thought I better get back to the campsite, so I started to head back. I did stop at the boat landing on my way, and noticed that there was a plethora of similar looking reeds along the edges of the landing. Being a good fisherman, I decided to make "one last cast", which actually turned into about 50 casts, but I am glad I did. I hooked several more nice bluegills, and then I had something big come up and smash my Gurgler. Turned out to be a big ol' largemouth of about 18 inches. That was a ton of fun on my 4-weight rod!
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| My 4-weight rod, an Unstructured Glass 8-footer |
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| Big ol' bass |
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| Another look, including my green Gurgler. |
What a fun night on a great lake! If you are ever up in the Itasca area, make sure you stop by La Salle Lake and see if anything is biting.
