Boats Farms and Life: Crab Lake fishing ronnie_garrison
by Fritz
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Tan, rested, and ready
A repackged Richard Nixon in the 1968 presidential campaign was declared The New Nixon: Tanned, Rested, and Ready.
10 days in Northern Wisconsin has left me feeling the same way. This is the 7th year Dr Ronnie Garrison and I have fished the Northwoods together. Well, that’s not entirely true, two of the years, 05 and 06, I wasn’t able to make it and we fished in Iowa instead.
The trip began with a competitive fishing tournament held each year and made up of a group of men who met via an Inernet discussion group/ usenet Rec.Outdoors.Fishing.Bass. This year’s tourney had a somber note and one of the original participants died the week of the event, and it was renamed in his honor, the Bob Rickardt Memorial Torunament. Like it or not, we’re all getting older, two of our group suffer from significant heat ailments, and they are young men in their 50’s.
So the meditative quality of fishing every day for 7 - 9 hours, in the quiet solitude of Northern Wisconsin had a special pay off this year.
This year, Ronnie and I spent much of our time on Crab Lake. It was there, on Crab Lake, in 2001 where we heard the unbelievable news about 9-11, from a very unbelievable scruffy man standing on a boat dock in a bath robe. We’ve been back on Crab on 9-11 in 2002 and again this year.
I did not fish as aggressively as I have in years past. I enjoyed (almost) every minute of time on the water. The day is snowed and sleeted of and on for 8 hours left me almost too cold to fish. And then, there was the day we hit the rocks on plane. The boat stopped with a thud, just after Ronnie killed the throttle. The skeg and prop crunched beyond repair — the motor still working, but the repair bill amounted to nearly $4500.
On Crab Lake, Ronnie tallied he caught 100 small mouth bass.
Do the math, $45 a fish.
