After a two-day break we opt to get in the truck and head for Hayward. The leak seems more like a slow seep so we cross our fingers and double check our tow coverage. The drive is uneventful, and we fall deep into the addiction that is fly fishing for muskie.
We borrow a johnboat and row up and down lakes casting flies that by all rights could have their own zip codes. Our second day on the water I have a 30-plus-inch fish follow my fly to the boat only to reject it at the last moment and go diving back into the dark tannin stained water. A few days later Mike hooks a small muskie on a fly he tied after Gus went to bed. We dub the fly the rainbow pheasant and joke that the fish wasn’t much bigger. We explore different flowages, catch huge small mouth bass and feisty pissed off pike as by catch. I have several more refusals. They come as vicious swipes that cause the water to explode and my heart to skip. After one aborted take in the middle of a river my hands are shaking and I’m breathing like I just ran the mile. We slow down to look at houses for sale and consider the school system in Hayward. Muskie fishing has us deep in its grip and we change plans to spend another two weeks chasing the large Esox.
As we approach our leave date we notice a strong smell of diesel in the cab of the truck and a greasy film coating the windshield. The axel and bearings are fine, but we’re leaking fuel into our cooling system. We take the mechanic’s loaner deep into the Chippewa drainage and get lost on back roads and heavy brush while the cost of the fix continues to add up. When the phone rings letting us know the truck is ready to go, we’re in it for several thousand dollars. The next day we catch our second muskie on a fly we tied. Long live the Big Year.