24

The following is the account of me and my brother over a 24 hour period of fishing.

1600 *beep BEEP beep BEEP*

After a two and a half hour drive up to Flagstaff, we stopped at Walmart for some nightcrawlers to use as bait. A man in the parking lot asked if we have seventeen cents to help him buy some JB weld to use on his motor because he had an oil leak. I was looking for my wallet as the man was telling us a story of a large pike he once caught at Upper Lake Mary. Then out of nowhere the rain began to fall...hard. The man ran back to his truck as I found my wallet had been in my brother's pocket. As I ran toward the store, I grabbed a bunch of change out of my wallet and gave it to the man, who was very grateful. After I had gotten the worms and forgotten to get the Storm Live Crapppie lures for fishing, I returned to the car to find the rain had subsided. Burger King gave us a quick meal before heading out to the lake.

1700 *beep BEEP beep BEEP*

We arrived at the lake and got our raft blown up and everything ready and took it down the short hike to the lake. We filled up the raft with too much stuff and headed out toward a cove across the lake that we liked before. After rowing for a few moments we realized the cove had some fishermen in a boat in it already. So we threw anchor and started to fish.

1800 *beep BEEP beep BEEP*

After several minutes of nothing, my brother put two worms on his other pole and lowered it below the boat near the bottom of the lake. Shortly after he reeled in a baby perch. He decided to leave it on the hook to use as bait for a larger pike while still having the second worm on as well.

After seeing this might be the way to fish right then, I put two worms on my second pole and lowered it down. After a very short time my pole bent way down and I grabbed it and started fighting. Realizing I had only 4 lb line on this pole I made sure to fight gently. Was it a large perch or a pike. As soon as this thought came into my mind I saw the pike come near the top and get tangled with our anchor line. We netted the fish, got everything untangled, and put it on the stringer. We tried this method, while always fishing with our other poles using lures, for hours with no success.

1900...2000...2100...2200 *beep BEEP beep BEEP*

The sun set creating a beautiful picture over the tree line. It began to get chilly so we started putting layers of clothes on. We set all four poles out; two with bobbers and worms, and two with anchovies and worms below the boat. The boat was starting to get a little flat so we pumped it up with the pump that we bring with us and I read a few chapters in Eragon using my head lamp. Once we were fully clothed in wool socks, thermal pants, sweater, jacket, beanie, face mask, and gloves, we tried to get comfortable, and would continue to try for the rest of the night. The raft we were in, with our tackle box, cooler, fishing poles, and backpack full of miscellaneous things we needed, left us less room than you could fit being in the fetal position. All night we were scrunched up, stretched out, cold, shifting, and waking up due to various body parts falling asleep from laying on them awkwardly. After a brief time of this kind of "sleep" (call it what you will), we decided to change the already changed plan. The plan for the weekend had been to visit with our church group who was camping up near the lake and then continue on to the lake. Then we would fish the night, all day Saturday, the night again, and then come home sometime on Sunday after some more fishing. We left late on Friday so we decided to go straight to fishing. At some point early in the night we decided if we didn't catch much in the morning before we went back to the car to eat breakfast and return our heavy clothing, we would leave that night after maybe trying Lower Lake Mary for some trout.

2300...0000...0100 *beep BEEP beep BEEP*

Come 1:30 we woke up hoping that it would be much later. Unfortunately it wasn't. There was a full moon so it was very bright all night long. We had a small spotlight that we would use to look at our bobbers whenever we would wake up to check for any bites. I was looking at my bobber, which showed no sign of fish playing with my bait, when I heard a loud splash near the shore. I shined the light in that direction and saw two eyes glowing by the trees. Then I saw two large bodies coming up from the water back toward the trees. They were elk. At least three and they headed back into the forest. We went back to sleep.

0200...0300...0400 *beep BEEP beep BEEP*

We woke up for the last time at 4 in the morning. The moon was falling over the trees and the light from the sun was soon filling the skies. It was very cold in the morning as we still had no more fish and began fishing with lures again, waiting for the sun to warm us up.

0500...0600...0700 *beep BEEP beep BEEP*

For the next few hours we fished back in the cove we wanted to fish the previous day. The only thing we caught was a tiny perch. I was bringing in a jerk bait and when I stopped reeling for a moment, my bait jerked. I thought it seemed a little delayed but I kept reeling it in. I brought it in and on the tip of the lure was a tiny perch the same size as my lure. --Back in that cove in the trees there is a Osprey nest. They have signs in the parking lot about this bird. It lives in this area during the summer and goes to South America during the winters--. We fished out the cove but caught nothing else. My brother got out and walked the edge of the cove. He saw some old bear tracks as well as the tracks from the elk that we had seen several hours earlier.

0800...0900 *beep BEEP beep BEEP*

More boaters were out now and one entered the cove as we left it. We fished along the shoreline and eventually loaded our other poles with worms again and dropped them down. As we made our way slowly back across the lake fishing both methods as we went, we caught a few small perch. The wind began to pick up and we were pushed to the shore a few hundred yards from our car. So we began to fish from the boat while against the land. There were weeds everywhere but with our 20 and 30 lb threaded spiderwire line we could pull our lines through anything. We would fish one spot and then push ourselves along the shoreline with our oars and fish again.

1000...1100 *beep BEEP beep BEEP*

My brother got a bite and brought in a nice pike just larger than the one from the previous evening. We put it on the stringer as our hopes went up that we would not go home with just one fish. My brother got out of the boat and began fishing from the shore as I stayed in the boat fishing from just off the shore. Then I caught one. We could tell it was much larger than the other two and then shortly after that my brother caught another one just larger than his last. At this point we were excited for fishing more of the shore but are stomachs were yelling at us. We had only had a few snacks while out on the boat all night. We decided to pack everything up except the backpack with some of our fishing tackle, eat and then fish the shore till it was time to leave.

1200...1300...1400 *beep BEEP beep BEEP*

After eating and packing up we went back down and fished the shore north of the truck. Very quickly my brother brought in another one. We had left the stringer with the four other fish back in the water near the truck so we got out another stringer for this one. It seemed to be about the same size as the other three, not including my larger one. We left that stringer there and kept moving. After a little bit I had a bite but nothing more. Then my brother brought in another one of the same size and while he was putting it on another stringer I caught an even larger one from the same spot. Then a little later I caught a small one that we let go and another keeper of almost the same size as the majority of our fish. We caught them all on either the Storm Live Crappie (the ones that I forgot to get at Walmart but we had only two of), and after the tails came off of those, the Storm Live Walleye. We tried other Rapalas and such but could only catch them on the Storm. And in fact the small perch caught on a jerk bait was also a Storm brand.

1500 *beep BEEP beep BEEP*

Then we headed back with the four. Three about the same size and one larger. We thought this was about the same as the four we had before but when we looked at them all together, the three newer ones were all bigger than the three previous ones and the new large one was bigger than the previous large one. Then we brought all of our 8 pike up to the truck and packed up the rest of our fishing stuff. The following are the pictures of the largest fish and then all of the fish together. The fish were 1 lb 15 oz, 2 lb 5 oz, 2 lb 10 oz, 2 lb 15 oz, 3 lbs, 3 lbs, 3 lb 11 oz, and 4 lb 6 oz.

And this concludes the story of our 24 hour adventure.