Ellen and I have been making meals together for some 40 plus years (ok, she does most of this and I bar tend). We do a lot of meals pretty much the same way, like grilling, deep frying, baking, etc. Since I heard grill guy on Joy Cardin, a few weeks ago, I have been grilling using only one burner and putting whatever I am cooking on the cooler side of the grill to cook with indirect heat, finally moving it over the burner to sear the final product. I have also done some grilling with a cedar plank thanks to Mad Dog and Merrill - um, um good. Last week one evening Ellen and I fixed fish in a different way. We usually bread our fish fillets with Fry Magic and fry them in our fish pot at 375 degrees or grill them on that cedar plank with lemon slices and butter. Gordie Hierlmeier has often suggested we try this: cut your fillets in half and arrange them in a frying pan on the stove, cover the filets with 7 Up, and then bring the ingredients to a boil until the fillets start to float, spoon them out and serve with butter to dip in. It is sort of a poor man’s lobster thing and it works! El fixed some red potatoes while I boiled the fish. It was excellent, very lobster like and quick to fix and clean up after. There were leftovers, so El put those filets in a frying pan the next morning and scrambled eggs over the top. Excellent too. You may be wondering about where the fish came from, well, Shell Lake of course.
Last week I rolled out at early-thirty and after coffee with my better-half, pointed the Ranger north on Highway 53. I stopped at the MacDonald’s in Osseo for a coffee refill and a breakfast sandwich but otherwise made good time, arriving at the Shell Lake landing a minute ahead of Gordie. The lake and village of Shell Lake is 8 miles or so west of Highway 53 in Washburn County. The town is small with a population under 1,400, but that probably goes way up on weekends and peak summer vacation times I imagine. The lake is ringed with homes. The lake water is crystal clear; when it is calm, one can see down fifteen feet or more.
Anyway, we drove over to my friends Deb and Dave Ekern’s, where we met up with their son Jake Ekern and his son Aren. Jake was a student teacher at De Soto back in 2000 and we try to get together every summer to fish, but sometimes life gets in the way so this was the first time in a few years. Jake and Gordie know each other because they were both Athletic Directors at one time or another in their careers and through me too I guess. Jake is the principal at Columbus today and Gordie teaches Health, Phy Ed, and Driver’s Ed at Glenwood City. (Did I mention that I am retired?) We caught up over coffee a bit and then drove over to Jake’s Grandpa Ekern’s where Jake’s Lund was docked. Jake complained that we brought the wind with us. The big water looked a bit rough, but it was blue under the nearly clear sky, broken up only by an occasional high cloud.
After visiting with his grandpa a bit, we motored out south to try and get out of the wind and find a spot to fish. It was cool enough that we were glad for our jackets and long pants at first. We anchored and tried casting some Mepps spinners with no luck. Actually, we didn’t anchor long as we started realizing that we were taking on water! Jake hit the bilge pump but we had a boatload of incoming H2O so we pulled up and raced back to the dock a half-mile away. As it turned out, Jake had to drive over to a marina to get a new plug as his was gone. For some reason they both chose to blame me because of my previous luck at landings and such.
Anyway, we eventually got back to fishing, using slip bobbers drowning crawler parts or small leeches or minnows. We had to move a few times before we started catching fish, but we did hammer the largemouth bass eventually. I caught the first fish, a dandy largemouth. One could see the fish move on your bait when the wind died down. There is a five fish bag limit on smallmouth and largemouth bass on Shell Lake. The bucket mouths are taking over the lake so we kept them. We kept largemouth bass and a few pumpkin seeds and bluegills that first boat ride out. We came in at supper time and cleaned our catch at the Shell Lake landing.
Shell Lake has a great fish cleaning facility. The building is well-lit inside and it has a stainless steel work area with cutting boards and a large and very powerful garbage disposal in the middle under a shield. Jake and I filleted our catch, pushing carcasses and skins down the drain. There are two water hoses with pressure sprayers on them too. Once the fish were cleaned, Jake hit a switch and the disposal roared to life, making short work of bones, scales, and guts. We cleaned up and headed over to his folks where his mom had a supper of do-it-yourself burritos for us. After supper we retooled and headed out to catch the sunset walleye bite. We caught them too, taking three limits. One can keep three walleyes but only one over over fourteen inches and we did. We also put more panfish in the livewell. I caught a snake northern and some small perch and a pumpkinseed or two before we headed in with our running lights on. Once again, we used the cleaning facility, appreciating the good lighting, water, and fillet boards. There is an $8 fee for out-of-towners to launch, but the money goes towards maintaining the landing and campground that included the cleaning shack, clean restrooms and lake side campsites. A guy waiting to use the clean a couple of small walleye said that a lakeside campsite cost $38 a night. Gordie had to head home, so we said goodbye after a great day of fishing and solving all of the problems of the world, especially those of Wisconsin schools.
The next morning there was room in the boat for Aren, but he had the option to go go-karting at Spooner, so I know what I would have chosen when I was twelve, (especially when he knew they were going out again that night and had three more days to fish.) Jake and I had coffee with his folks and then went back out on the water.
The wind had died down and one could see down to yellow sand where the occasional bass and panfish were drifting along the weed lines. Jake finally found the fish along a weedy shoreline. We caught bass and panfish again and enjoyed the cool morning and then sunshine. I pulled the plug on the expedition around noon and headed home with a bag of the aforementioned filets after we cleaned another livewell full of fish around 1:30.
Until next time, get out - I hope Jake and I and Gordie and Aren too can make the trip to Shell Lake more often and not miss so many years in the future. Life is good and sometimes, it don’t get no better. Enjoy.
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