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Mark Walters - Columnist

(An Outdoorsman’s Journal) - Hello friends.

This week’s column contains a mixed bag of results. Anytime you’re living life to its fullest, you have to take the good with the bad.

Friday, March 7

High 9, Low minus 6

I was really looking forward to the trip I was about to take, and to be perfectly honest, pretty much ignoring some poor health I had been living with for about four days.

My plan was simple, together with my golden retriever “Ice” and my cocker spaniel “Brownie” I was going to cross country ski the entire 23.000 acre Petenwell flowage.

Ice would pull a sled with about 50-pounds of gear and mine would hold about 90, which consisted of food, camping equipment and ice fishing gear.

I had figured I could do the fifty-mile journey in an easy three days. What I did not figure on was problems from a tooth that I had an old cavity refilled, earlier in the week.

The pups and I started our journey at Wilderness Park in northern Juneau County and even though it was only six degrees, all was well in our world.

After about a mile of struggling to pull my sled on hard pack snow over the top of 30-inches of ice I decided to pass on the skis and just walk.

My five-year-old buddy “Ice” who had not been hooked to a sled in two years was rebelling against his load by laying down on the job until I would get a couple of hundred yards away from him. Then Ice would do a power lunge in my direction, every time crashing his sled into mine.

After switching from ski’s to boots I had a new problem and that was that I was busting through the snow with each step as I headed south, towards the dam at which point I would adjust my course and head northeast.

Something was wrong and I just could not figure it out. My energy level was stagnant and so was my mood. After traversing about nine miles, I decided I had better make sure my minnows were healthy. When I opened the cooler that they were in, most of my bait for my trip was belly up.

I had big plans of catching walleye and crappie on this adventure and live bait was a part of that plan.

It was 2:30 in the afternoon. I could see an island that my lake map told me had a water depth of 45-feet on one side of it, my bait was not doing well, there was a very cold northwest wind and I was toast.

That is when I made an executive decision. I would camp on the downwind side of the island, put out three tip-ups and regroup. I might add that where I chose to camp was in a totally remote area, no houses and not even a manmade track in the snow of any kind.

I built a comfortable camp, tried catching a fish and spent the evening in my tent, reading, writing and deep in thought as I have a lot on my mind these days.

One of those thoughts was about what a difficult winter it has been to catch fish for myself as well as from all of the reports I receive from other fishermen.

Saturday, March 8

High 14, Low minus 18

The only way I could function for the last 24 hours was by taking two-aspirin every three hours.

This morning, I was up before sunrise and was hurting bad. I kept thinking that I must be getting too old for winter treks, but that thought just was just not adding up.

I made another decision this morning and that was to fish until the early afternoon, enjoy my campsite and then make the 9-mile journey back to my truck.

What is one of the few types of fish you can catch with dead bait? The answer is, catfish. I caught one 3-pound channel cat today and felt that at least I caught something.

When the pups and I began the journey back to the truck today, the real story began.

My head hurt something terrible and I had no energy. Three different times, I laid on top of my Otter Sled and took naps. I was feeling like an absolute whimp.

More bad news appeared when I realized one of my cross-country ski’s fell off my sled and I had to backtrack one mile to find it.

While I was doing that, I had the pleasure of watching two coyotes that I think may have thought I would make an easy meal. As disturbing as this sounds, I actually had thoughts of leaving the ski.

The last two miles to my truck was one of my toughest mental challenges of my life.

I was totally done in and other than breaking through snow with each step and lots of body pain I could not figure out why.

When I got home I could hardly even lift a hundred pound bag of feed.

The whole story came together 36 hours later when I made a return trip to my dentist and found out I had an infection in my tooth that was spreading like wild fire.

All in a lifetime!

Sunset

P.S. Even though I was a bit down and out, my pup Ice ended up pulling his sled like the champ that he is.

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