A Northwoods Vacation Fishing Tale – featuring Danielle Knauf (Tyler Knauf’s wife)

Tyler Knauf submitted a great story about a recent fishing vacation with his wife Danielle. I have to say that Tyler could probably be a writer for an outdoor magazine! Thank you for submitting Tyler and congrats on your catch! If you don’t know Tyler, he is a Building Automation System (BAS) Manager working out of the De Pere location.

We were on a family vacation recently during the middle of June up in Vilas county when it happened.  With two little ones at home (4 months and 2 1/2) it’s not often we’ve been able to get out in the boat together (just the two of us).  But one night of the vacation, I convinced my wife Danielle to go out fishing just before dark as we had gotten the kids down for the night earlier than expected.  I had some success catching a few walleyes in a spot the night prior after fishing for a couple of hours with my brother. So, I decided with very limited time before nightfall, we would hit that spot and hope for the best.  The timing of sunset coinciding with a major fishing period had me feeling oddly confident that we might find some success.  We got to our spot with just about 20 minutes of daylight left and it was go-time to get the baits in the water.  We were fishing around an island with crankbaits as I’ve had decent success doing this during the evening and into the night on many northern WI lakes in June.  I had the boat spot locked and were hammering one stretch of shore for 30 minutes or so, which can be a little discouraging without success, but given that it was already completely dark we weren’t feeling like we were going to try a second spot as I didn’t have a ton of confidence anywhere else on the lake at the time.  Feeling like we were going to strike out for the night, I assured Danielle that we were in the peak of the major fishing period, and we still had a chance where we were. 5 minutes later, now fully entrenched in the thick of darkness, Danielle exclaimed that she had something but wasn’t sure what it was as the initial fight was a bit lackluster.  Nonetheless, I scrambled to grab the net with anxious excitement as any fish at this point would make the night feel like a success.  As she got the fish near the boat, I pointed my light to the water to see where it was, and that’s when my heart started racing.  I don’t know if I’ve ever put a net in the water and scooped up a fish any faster, even despite the obvious lack of lighting.  I’ll let the picture tell the rest of the story, but I can only imagine this story will continue to get better as the years go on.