Skip the preview and proceed to chronicles?

Date Line: May 17, 2005
To: Woman Lake Chronicles member list
From: Juris Ozols, grumpy@walleyes.org

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 23 years now. This will be year 24.

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 sixth 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:

I’ll be doing it again this year. Hence this preview. The list has grown to some 150 folks, and I’ve added you to the list, again for obscure reasons. I’ll have the nightly report for you along with a link to that day’s pictures. Sometimes, in a good year, the photos include shots of walleyes. However, the fishing has been slow the last couple of years, and you just might have to do with shots of sunsets and loons. The attached is a Woman Lake pic from last year to give you the flavor. In any case, we’ll see.

I’m leaving for Woman Lake on Thursday, and so you’ll get the first report that night, and I’ll be sending them out until the middle of the next week when we close up.

Now then, should you decide this is not for you, and you want to get your name off this botherosome 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 – poof! – you’ll be gone from the list.

Alternatively, email me back to 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 – We’ll be up there Thursday, we’ll fish than famous “evening bite,” and I’ll have stories and pictures for you that night.

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

And... Cheers —
Juris