Our day in Minnesota started at 12:01AM as we continued our drive eastward from our RV disaster in North Dakota.  We arrived at Lake Vermillion around 1AM and proceeded to try to find our beds.  If you recall, 8 hours earlier we were preparing to disembark our motor home for a  rental car and we had turned every box in the RV upside down trying to find the bare essentials we would need to carry on.  As described yesterday, we were able to get our RV going again and so we had not tackled the arduous task of re-organizing the RV again.

I awoke at 5AM as Minnesota had received a cold front and the temperature inside was in the 50’s.  I lay in bed trying to get warm for the better part of the next hour before my alarm went off at 6AM - 4 hours sleep.  I was dragging.  Taylor was pretty beat too.

We met our guide Musky Tom Wehler at 7AM at the Hoodoo Point Campground boat launch and we were off to try our hands at catching the elusive Musky.  These predator fish get big – with some approaching four feet in length and weighing 30-50 pounds.

We had never fished for Musky and were first intrigued by the huge lures we would catapult into the water with our rods and reels that looked like they would be more at home on a deep sea fishing charter boat.  Many of these lures were larger than half the fish we’ve caught so far – and when we would send them 200 feet toward shore their splash was sure to get the attention of every Musky in 50 feet.

Although we were again rain free (32 States in a row) the wind was brutal.  We were easily fishing in 30 mile per hour winds and by the time we headed for home the lake was a sea of white caps.

Taylor had one 3 footer follow his lure to the boat but in all we only made a down payment on what is needed to catch “the fish of 10,000 casts”.  We estimate in our four hours that we made a solid 500 casts between the two of us – so we now have 5% of the casts necessary to catch our first Musky.  By 11AM my right arm, shoulder and lower back was done.  It’s no wonder you see fishermen trolling for musky in the afternoons – they can’t possibly sling another 1 pound lure another time.

We were back in the RV at noon and spent the next hour trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  At 1PM we were off to Wisconsin to try our had at some St. Croix smallies tomorrow morning.