A month ago my brother in law Mike asked me if I’d like to join he and his son Andy for 4 days of fishing on Snowbank Lake northeast of Ely. How could I refuse being retired and all… I should have time for that and …well there’s fishing involved. 
A few days before we were to leave I was listening to reports about the Pagami Creek fire which started from a lightning strike a little ways south of the lake and that it had grown to 16,000 acres. The last we heard it was at 92,000 acres.
A call to the resort confirmed that all was well so off we went at O’dark:30 on the 14th. After a quick lunch in Ely the skies started turning dark and we noticed some sleet in the air and by the time we were unloading the truck we were in the midst of a snow/sleet/rain squall with high winds and fog covering the lake and temps dropping fast. 
What a great start – access to the resort is only by boat so it was an interesting 
trip across the lake with our second load of gear – a good night to start a fire in the fireplace, crack open a few 
and check tackle for an early start the next morning.
The four days all started out either foggy or smokey or both. The only fish that wanted to play until Saturday were bass and we tried all kinds of depths and presentations and they were even hitting right off the bottom in 40′ of water. Water temps consistently stayed about 64. Andy caught a nice large mouth on Thursday 
but Mike and I had to wait until Saturday morning for any walleyes to get our heart rates up and running. After a good battle on 6lb line Mike landed a nice 24″ walleye 
in 35′ of water with an orange hook and a large minnow while we were covering some water with his new trolling motor. My excitement had to wait until the afternoon when in a new spot I caught a nice 18″ walleye 
on a large minnow and a red hook-again in 35′. We had many other “swing and a miss” experiences but at least didn’t get skunked. In hindsight we think we maybe had too large of minnows as there seemed to be lots of short bites. A local told us Sunday morning that the week before the walleyes were commiting suicide but they couldn’t catch one the whole week we were up there – go figure 
Thursday evening while we were finishing supper a roar overhead brought us to our feet and out onto the dock to see a Canadian firefighting tanker plane from Manitoba flying over and banking to skim the water to fill up and go dump on some fire. This fire had many people in the area nervous (as well as us) but watching these planes come in and pick up water was one of the coolest things I’ve ever witnessed on the water. When we left they reported that there were over 500 people involved in the fire fight and finally gaining some ground on it. The good news was that no lives or structures lost as of Sunday. Those people sure earn their pay in those conditions.
Had a blast Mike and Andy-can’t wait til next year. Pictures: Andy with bass, Mike with 24″ eye, Me with 18″ eye, Water Tanker overhead, Water Tanker on water.
