Spring Cleaning

            Not that spring has finally come, the only bad part of spring has come quick. Spring cleaning, all the things that were left out all winter under a couple of feet of snow are spread out everywhere, things you don't even recognize are found once the snow melts. The thing in the worse shape was our boat. The boat never made it to barn last fall and we didn't put a boat cover on. All of the snow from the winter and rain from the spring has been collecting in the boat and even though the plug was out, the boat was leaning forward away from drainage hole. Normally, I can lift the front of the boat up myself

Some of the ice collecting in the boat. 

to put a object under it , but it took my dad, uncle, cousin, and me to lift up the boat so it could drain. The boat took over a day until all the water was drained. We also left the two batteries in the boat all winter so we took them out of the boat and started charging them. Luckily the batteries are both still good and are now fully charged. The next step was to open all the drawers to let them dry, so we can remove all the leaves and other garbage. There are still two things left to do with the boat. The first thing we have to do is fix a wheel. One of the wheels on the trailer has a whole in it and we will have to either buy another wheel or find the hole and fix the wheel. The second thing we have to do is find another screw for the motor. There are two screws for the lower unit to put in lower unit lube. We only found one of the screws and will probably have but another screw of the same size. We are trying to get these things done as soon as possible because almost all the ice if of lakes in the area and fishing opener has already passed.

Spring

                 This is my family's first spring at our new house since we moved in. The last couple of weeks were  spent by pickaxing our driveway to remove the foot or so of packed snow and ice that have built up. This past weekend was no different. The weather was beautiful in the 50's and the snow was definitely melting. My sister and I were throwing snowball at different targets when my parents got home and we started pickaxing the driveway again. Everything was moving slow but perfectly fine, when my dad opened our garage door to find four inches of water on the floor. There is a drain in our garage but we never used it, we didn't even know if the drain worked. The first thing we did was try and take the cover off the drain. I tried with a round file and a screwdriver, but the file broke. I then found the two thickest screwdriver I could and was able to take the drain off. We got the shop-vac out and tried to clear the drain out. It took emptying over ten full buckets of water, rust, and whatever else was stuck in the drain before we bought the house before we could even the pipe. We would suck a whole bucket of water and then change the hose around and try and blow the dirt around to break it up. Every time my hand hit the top of the shop vac to turn it off I would feel a shock. That doesn't seem too safe considering i was standing in a pool of water, but it didn't hurt so we kept going. We ended up getting rid of all of the water and we cleared to drain so it is working properly now.

Basketball

           Now that basketball is over I had a free weekend for the first time since early November. Slowly i have been getting more and more tired and sore. Going into the weekend I told myself I was going to do something productive and fun that i wasn't able to do during basketball, something like ice fishing or walking around our property in waist high snow with my dog. What actually happened was much different I woke up at 11 am when the night before I fell asleep at 10 pm. That set the tone for the weekend because that night the same thing happened, I fell asleep at 10 pm and woke up around 11:30 the next morning. That is 26 hours of sleep in two nights. It turned out all I did over the weekend was sleep, eat, and watch television. Even tough I didn't actually accomplish anything it felt good. I had no commitments, and could do whatever i wanted. Yes, I miss basketball the after school practices and of course the games, but one thing I will never miss are those Saturday morning practices that make you wake up early and put a kink in your whole day. The sleep and rest felt really good, my body and mind needed it. Now on Monday i am not groggy and sleepy like most Monday mornings during basketball season, but instead i'm awake and attentive.

Lake of the Woods

My dad, uncle, grandfather, a family friend and me recently spent three days near Baudette Minnesota at Lake of the Woods. The first day we took two vehicles up to our cabin we were staying at. We left at four and finally found the cabin at nine. When we got there it was much more than we expected. When we walked in it felt like it was someone's house, a full kitchen, living room, bathroom and five beds. When we got up the next day we got to our ice house at about eight. The first fish of the trip was a Tullibee. On the first day we caught around 100 fish between the five of us, most were Walleyes or Saugers. My uncle and I caught 5 Tullibee and I caught a 12 inch perch. The first day we caught six fish over 23 inches my dad caught the biggest walleye of the trip at 29 inches. The last fish of the day I caught on a bobber I left in the whole as we were picking up all our stuff getting ready to leave for the day. It was a 25 inch walleye my biggest walleye of the trip.


My dad's 29 inch walleye

My 25 inch walleye



 We got off the ice an hour after sunset and drove back to the cabin. We kept 20 fish the first day and once we got back to the cabin we cleaned and cooked the fish, after we were finished eating we still had extra fish we ate the next day. In the morning of our last day we got to our ice house 30 minutes before sunrise. The first fish of that day was an Eel pout the only one we caught all trip. The last day of fishing was slower than the first but we caught 10 fish over 20 inches, including a 33 inch northern that tangled up every line in the ice house. We had to cut all of our lines to untangle them and after all that we had to release it because it was in a protected slot. It took us about ten minutes to get all the rods how they were before the northern. We left the ice house at four and came back to our cabin to grab our gear; we left our cabin at five and got back to Duluth at 11:30.