This past weekend, I took 7 other guys with me up to my parent's house for our 2nd Annual Guys Weekend. We had a lot of fun last year and decided to do it again this year. We had a slightly different group of guys this year. The group of guys were Dan, Matt, Harry, Jason, Abe, Josh, Zach, and myself.
On Friday, 5 of us went up early to get tents setup and to go fishing that evening. We stopped in town to get fishing licenses, some gear, and some ammunition. We showed up at my parents house around 1:30pm and quickly got 4 of the tents setup. We then got the boats ready for the first fishing trip. The first trip was to Crooked Lake. Zach and I went in the paddle boat on a separate part of the lake while Dan, Matt, and Jason all went in the boat. This was the first time the boat was out and thus due to an issue, the boat only went in reverse. Thus, the trolling motor was used a lot. Despite the boat issues, they still managed to get 2 keepers. I managed to catch a few bass fairly early on, but only one was a keeper (about 3 pounds). We filled up the cooler with some water and put him in. About an hour later, the fish got tired of the cooler and decided to jump, open the cooler lid, and get back into the lake! This is a true story, but I am sure most of you won't believe me. Matt and I both lost decent sized Northerns as well. The rest of the guys showed up around 9:30 that night. Abe setup his tent, we cleaned the fish, and then relaxed and ate dinner.
On Saturday, we got up at 6am, made eggs and sausage, and then headed out to Lobster Lake with 2 boats and a paddle boat. Abe and I went in the paddle boat, Dan, Josh, and Matt went in one boat and Jason, Harry, and Zach went in the other boat. The lake was definitely clearer than Crooked lake, but the fish just weren't biting. Abe caught a keeper northern (along with the little guy below). Abe and also ran into a bit of trouble with the Paddle boat when the paddle broke preventing us from going anywhere. We called Dan and he came to tow us around. Thankfully, there wasn't much time left in the trip. Either way, we had fun. We only caught a few keepers that morning. Keep in mind, any fish we caught were to be eaten for dinner on Saturday night...and at this point we only had a few fish.
Saturday afternoon consisted of some gun shooting. We started with some .22's. We tied some balloons to some fishing string and tied it between two posts. We then had to try and shoot the balloons from a distance (there was a slight wind which made it a bit tricky). Surprisingly, we managed to hit quite a few of the balloons. We then went back and grabbed the shotguns. We had 3 shotguns (all 12 Gauges), some clay pigeons, and a few live pigeons. We went out and shot some clay pigeons. We then saved some shells and went over by the silo's and attempted to shoot some live pigeons that were flying in to or out of the silos. This is always fun and I am pretty sure we all had a lot of fun doing this.
Saturday evening we went out fishing once again. Since we broke the paddle boat, we had to put 4 people in each boat. We went to Lake Mary in hopes of catching some Walleye or Northern, but we had no luck. After a while of not catching anything, Dan, Matt, Josh, and Abe all went back closer to the dock where the Bass fishing was better. The rest of us in the other boat followed shortly there after. We managed to catch about 5 bass that we were able to keep. Harry started catching some small Sunnies. Up to this point, Jason hadn't caught any fish, but we were determined not to leave until he caught at least one fish. Right before we were going to call it quits, Jason caught one. As you can see below, we did not want to let it get away so we used the net. :) After we got back, we cleaned the fish and started to prepare for dinner. Matt made the fish, Jason made the brats, and we had a very good meal. We were all a bit exhausted that evening and crashed around 11:30.Sunday morning we went out one last time. We went out around 7:15 and went to Lake Rachel. We dropped in both boats. One went to the left of the dock (Harry, Jason, Matt, and Zach) and the other went to the right (Dustin, Josh, Dan, and Abe). Harry's boat only caught a couple fish worth keeping. Dan's boat managed to catch 6 decent Bass. This was probably the best of the 4 fishing trips in regards to the amount of fish we brought back.
After we got back, we all packed up our tents, packed the vehicles, cleaned the fish, and cleaned up the garage where we spent a lot of our time when sitting around and eating. Around 1:30 we hit the road. I believe Zach shows how tired we were after the weekend in this picture (note that he did not know that I took this picture).
It rained only slightly on Saturday but did not affect us much at all. The food was good, the weather was good, the fishing was okay (was hoping it would be better), the guys were fun. I would call the weekend a success. I'm looking forward to doing it again next year.
FYI - My parents had screened in their garage so this made it easy for us to sit in there and still have a breeze coming in without all the bugs. It worked very well. Much thanks to my parents for letting us use the garage, kitchen, camper, boat, paddle boat, vehicles, fishing poles, grill, deep fryer, toaster, and probably a few other things. Also much thanks to my Uncle for letting us use his boat as well.
