Derek Johnston has a current post regarding Mil Lacs, but I don’t have a good story from there. BUt his story reminded me of a trip to Eagle Lake about the same time as Derek’s story.
We were fishing out of Pine Beach Resort and having a great time catching a fair amount of average Eagle Lake walleyes. My uncle Keith and I were fishing together in his boat. While trolling across the mouth of Bottle Bay, he set the hook on a big fish.
Now, the rest of the story is true, I swear. Earlier in the week my Dad lost a huge Pike at the boat when another family member freaked and lunged at it with the net and knocked it off. So, this was on my mind as he was bringing the walleye up from about 15 feet.
My uncle doesn’t fish a lot and his gear is OLD! HE had an ancient rod with line that had to be the original issue! He hooked the fish with an equally old crawler harness. So anyways he gets the fish to the boat with little problem and I saw those EYES. It was huge. I netted it for him and layed on the floor to get the lure out.
The top hook was not in the mouth, the second hook was broke at the bend and the bottom hook was barely in the side of it’s mouth and was almost untied!! I swear this is true. I cut the harness, put it in a plastic bag and stashed it in my tackle box.
My cousins and another uncle, Ray, came to see what we had and we measured it. 30″ and 10#. Keith said at that point, let’s have her for dinner tonight. We all cried NOOO! Ray said this could be a once in lifetime fish and has to go back or on the wall. Keith was unimpressed and said he was planning to eat it.
Then the other four of us said we would pay to have it mounted and Keith agreed. We put it the freezer and Ray brought it to his house to later bring to have mounted.
Ray put it in his chest freezer in the garage and planned to bring it in a few weeks for mounting. So, some time later, Ray was going out to the freezer for some meat for dinner. He opened the lid and everything inside was MELTED… The plug had come out of the wall just enough to shut the freezer off. His first thought was Keith’s fish. He threw it into his freezer in the house and called the taxidermist.
He said to bring it to him and he would see what he could do, no guarantees. Well, he was able to do it. It sits in my uncle Keith’s living room as a table mount. It turned out beautiful. That old crawler harness was attached to a chunk of drift wood. He had cut off a piece of hook and placed it in the tongue (I had to write that word about six times to get the correct spelling), put a bit of glue on the bottom hook to keep it looking like it was about to come untied and barley hooked it in the side of the mouth.
It was a great way to remember that particular trip and I tell that story often. 
