Skip the preview and proceed to chronicles?

Date Line: May 8, 2003
To: Woman Lake Chronicles member list
From: Juris Ozols, grumpy@walleyes.org

For those of you from previous years, who got our daily Woman Lake walleye reports and pictures from our annual trips up there in May, greetings! We trust that you'll be interested again this year, and rest assured that you're still on our email list.

For those of you who are new this year, welcome! Here's what this is about: My crowd of fishing buddies and I have been going up to Woman Lake in central Minnesota for our annual walleye "Fishing Opener" trip for 22 years now. This will be year 23.

For obscure reasons, incomprehensible even to myself, I started out sending daily emails on our fishing adventures in the year 2000. (It may have had something to do with the turning of the millennium, but probably not.)

In any case, these daily reports from our fishing week went out to a select group of my friends. The reports covered each day's events, statistics on fish caught and lost, weather, fishing conditions, and other dreams and lies. I also included photographs, carefully screened to give you a real feel for a Minnesota fishing trip.

I got mostly positive responses (but see below) and am now into my fourth year of this nonsense.

Jerry Peters, Woman Lake cabin owner and chef extraordinaire, has compended those previous reports into "Woman Lake Chronicles" on his Fishing Memories web pages – and you might like to visit there, to get a feel for what all this is about: http://walleyes.org/wolakechron/index.html

I'll be doing it again this year. Hence this preview. Part of the crowd is already up there, and my buddy Peter Hunt (he comes up here from Texas every year just to fish out trip!) and I will be going up there tomorrow. So you'll get the first report Saturday night, and I'll be sending them out until next Friday when we close up.

Now then, should you decide this is not for you, and you want to get your name off this bothersome mailing list? Very easy – two ways to do it. You can send me a registered letter with a handwritten note that says something to the effect: "Take me off your misbegotten spam list before I sue you!" Include your name and email address, and please enclose a check for $25 for postage and handling, and you'll be gone from the list.

Alternatively, email me at: grumpy@minn.net and say the same thing (I'll relax the requirement for the twenty-five bucks) and you will be troubled no longer.

In all fairness I do need to tell you, though, that in the years I've been doing this, only one fellow asked to unsubscribe (he used method 2). I unsubscribed him.

The very next day his water heater sprung an ominous leak, his dog disappeared, his car was stolen, and his wife ran away with her boss.

He re–subscribed.

Immediately thereupon, he fixed the water heater by tightening a connection, his dog wandered home none the worse for wear, the police recovered his car undamaged and with a full gas tank, and – best of all – his wife didn't come back. I can't promise any of that applies to you, but be forewarned.

Okay – Peter and I will be up there tomorrow, we'll fish that famous "evening bite," and I'll have stories and pictures for you tomorrow night.

I'm looking forward to it and I hope you are too.

And... Cheers —
Juris