I was a little groggy when the robins were singing at 4 AM.  I rolled over a few extra times before finally making the coffee at exactly 4:45.  Heck, I fished till 10 last night then didn’t get to sleep till midnight.  But today’s forecast was for another brutally hot one so it was important to get on the water early.  Off Granny and I went to a new place, Nelson Lake.

Nelson Lake is a big one precisely 12 minutes from our house.  We had the boat on the water at 5:30 and I was motoring us somewhere.  Honestly, Nelson was a spur of the moment thought so I literally googled up a map of the big lake on my phone as we putted along.  About half the lake is decorated in vacation homes the other half is quite wild being in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.

The lake has a one northern pike limit and the toothy fish has to be 32” or more.  This tells me there’s some big ones so I headed to a weedy bay on the northside.  It was a pretty location with lots of bait swishing around.  There were frogs and turtles but we couldn’t find a pike.

By 7 the sun was high and strong.  The temperature surged and no doubt we were in the 80°s by 8.  At this point we’d fished through a few good looking spots with nothing more than a strike.  Granny was tossing my 9-weight Winston and with a musky sized fly.  Granny will join me on a trip to Gangler’s in northern Manitoba in September so I want her to be tuned to casting the big stick all day.

At 8:30 as Granny was eating her yogurt I finally went tight.  The strike was fierce and had me fooled into thinking I had something big.  But false alarm.  It was 20 something inch hammer-handle sized pike.  I’d stick another shortly after and a small largemouth bass.

I promised Granny we’d be off the lake before it got too hot.  At 10 I headed back for the boat ramp.  It turns out we’d traveled quite a few miles and we ran out of gas.  Lucky for me, we were only a half mile short.  Though fishing was overall slow, it was a very nice morning that ended with some prime upper body work out for my shoulder.  We reached a high of 90° late this afternoon as I finish this blog post.  Hot!

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing