Fishing with Dick Ellis from On Wisconsin outdoors

Fun with Dick,
Dick Ellis is a rather famous outdoor writer. After a successful fishing trip this spring Dick mentioned that if we got on another hot bite we should call him and he would do a story on our trip. Louis from Wolf River Outfitters found some huge northerns on Lake Poygan. Dick got the call and we really wanted to show him a good time and get him a big northern for pictures and an article for his magazine.
Let us know what kind of impression we might have left him with. We started the trip from Fremont and headed towards Lake Poygan with two boats. This two-boat thing helps with camera angles and also helps us cover more water to find fish. After fishing for a few hours we did not catch a fish or even have a hit. Besides an injury not catching fish on a guide trip is about the worst thing for a guide. A fishless outing does occasionally happen especially when pursuing big fish, such as huge northerns.
Well it was getting dark and time to leave but Louis’s motor would not start. We thought this was not going to be a major problem. We would just tow Louis’s boat with mine. When we started towing, my big boat motor mysteriously starts to tilt up with no one touching any buttons or switches. This same problem happened to my boat once before several years ago when we were in 4-foot waves on Lake Michigan. My daughter in law has not gone fishing with me since that episode. The problem that time, and we soon discovered this time, was a switch in the front of my boat. If that switch gets damp it malfunctions. We stationed Jason (Dick Ellis’s friend) in the front of the boat by that fateful switch. Jason was vigilant and every few minutes jiggled the switch to get the motor to trim back down. Actually he had help being vigilant because when he was late with the switch jiggle the guys in Louis boat would politely remind him. The fact is if they did not remind Jason to jiggle the switch they would get a shower from the spray of a trimmed up motor.
It was now well into darkness but we were starting to make a little progress upstream. Suddenly an alarm sounds and the oil light goes on. We shut things down and fumble in the darkness to add spare oil into the reservoir, all the time drifting back down stream.
We set out again and start to make a little progress. Then after glancing at the gauge we’re amazed at how fast the gas gauge was creeping into the empty mark. We learned that fuel efficiency is hampered substantially when towing a boat. Finally it got to the point where we would be empty soon.
Louis's boat, which had plenty of gas, also has an internal tank, so that gas was close but inaccessible. I decided to shut down the big motor and run my more efficient 4 stroke 15 horse trolling motor. We hoped this would be the smart choice to help us complete our ill-fated return trip. So once again we are aimlessly drifting back down stream in the darkness. There is another problem to consider when choosing the 4 stroke motor option. To steer the boat you have to connect a rod from the big motor to the smaller motor. The problem here is if (Or in our case when.) the big motor tilts up it pinches the connecting bar and we cannot turn the steering wheel. Louis had the idea to disconnect the relay under the hood of my big motor to stop the big motor from tilting up. This was a great idea especially if it was daytime in calm water; unfortunately we had windy conditions in the dark. By the time we got the motor cover off and removed the relay we had drifted back down stream and again lost a lot of the ground we had struggled to gain.
Finally we were on the last leg of our “ impress the out door writer” fishing trip. It is now almost 11:00 pm and at the present pace we should be safe and sound at the landing in about 20 minutes. Hunger pains, and lack of sleep would not deter us. Louis was trying to keep our spirits up and stated, “ Well with all the problems we had tonight at least it didn’t rain.” 20 minutes later we took our hungry, tired, recently rain drenched bodies out of the boats and on to the dock. Well did we impress the Outdoor Writer? What was remarkable about this whole ordeal is, no one lost there cool and we actually had a feeling of fun and adventure. In fact Dick still had faith in us. Would you believe Louis got another boat and took the crew back out again the next morning? They got their huge northern, the picture, the story, and they earned it.