The Old Lund on Dad’s Reef

Dwayne on the reef

At nine o’clock I heard the hundred-and-fifty coming before I saw it. Dad’s boat came around the point at half throttle, slowed, and settled down off the plane a hundred yards out.

Dwayne must have tried his other spots first. He’d fished the opener on this reef, I knew that, and I suppose he figured I’d go somewhere else.

He sat there with the motor idling and looked across the water at me.

Then he shut down, dropped the bow mount trolling motor and started fishing the outside edge, the deep side, the side where Dad and I always caught the smaller fish in May.

I could have waved him in. I could have pointed. I didn’t. It wasn’t spite, I don’t think.

I just didn’t know what to say to him, and so I said nothing, and he said nothing back.

We fished a hundred yards apart all morning. That big fish made four, my limit, so every walleye after her went straight back over the side.

Dwayne caught a few. I saw him net them. He never looked my way again.

At noon the wind came up out of the northwest, the way it does, and the lake went from glass to chop in half an hour.

Dwayne pulled his trolling motor and ran for the south end without a backward glance.

The ride in

A sixteen-foot boat with a tiller motor does not ride a northwest chop the way a nineteen-foot rig does.

I knew that. I had known it all along, and this was the part Dwayne had been right to worry about.

I pulled the anchor at twelve thirty to give myself plenty of time.

I cinched every buckle on my vest, tucked the cooler tight against the middle seat with my bags, and turned the Lund into the waves.

I ran her at quarter throttle, quartering into the swells so she wouldn’t pound.

Spray came over the bow and soaked my fleece. Twice I slowed almost to nothing and let a big set roll under me.

It took me an hour and ten minutes to cover what Dad’s boat would have run in fifteen.

Three times I checked the cooler, and three times the pump was still bubbling and the fish were still upright.

I came around the last point at one forty with my arms shaking and water sloshing around my boots.

The landing was full of boats and people. A few of them saw the Lund coming and started pointing.