We went to eat breakfast when the lodge opened at 05:00. Filled up the thermoses with coffee and put the boats in the water. I had a helluva time finding a parking place for the truck and trailer... there were an amazing number of people out on the lake on Saturday.

We fished 'til about noon, then went in to eat. We had caught no fish... zero. Doug and Greg had seen one caught, though, and so had we.

We changed strategies for the afternoon. Different baits, different part of the lake. No fish. We were all getting very frustrated and very tired; we decided to go in for the day before any more damage was done. Doug had broken the cable for his trolling motor on a stump, and Les had come close to it numerous times. We went back to the lodge and found that the promised suite had not materialized so we were stuck in a two-bed room. We got them to give us one roll-away bed, though.

I called Karen and we chatted for a while. Then Doug called Sherry. There was a crisis back in Topeka, and Doug was going to have to leave.

After a lot of reflection and pondering, I decided to leave with him. This was a hard decision to make and one that was very reluctant, but I thought that it would be best if I returned to Topeka with Doug. I had too many things on my mind to really enjoy this vacation anyway, and I had come really close to calling it off a couple of weeks ago. And it's a whole lot harder to fish with three people in a boat... all in all, I think that I made the right call.

As we were eating supper, we found out that nobody had caught any fish on Saturday. There was a high that moved in, and they had lowered the lake level by a couple of feet. That effectively shut down the fish. Sunday and Monday it should get better. I won't know for a few days, though...