You Realize You Are Fishing In A Parking Lot

In-Yan-Teopa (you can see sunlight shining through the hole in the bottom center of the photo)

Camping at Frontenac was great fun. Coffee perked on top of a picnic table tastes better than any you can buy from a barista at a coffee shop. Two people in our camping party wanted to go fishing. So we went fishing. First we went fishing at the pier in Lake City. Another fishing party had caught a nice sized walleye so we stayed there for a couple hours. One fishing pole got horribly tangled. I worked on untangling the fishing line for 20 minutes before I gave up. Then we had one angler. No fish were caught that day. The next day only one angler was left so we went fishing again. We fished at the highway wayside rest between Frontenac and Lake  City. The area was flooded. Water filled the lower parking lot. While she fished I sat and whittled away at a wood carving while perched comfortably on the sidewalk. The sun was warming my back and legs. We both noticed movement in the water of the parking lot. Carp were breaching the water next to the cement barriers that keep cars out of the river. These were big carp. The angler was sure they were Asian carp. We drove to the closest Kwik Trip to buy a can of corn. We opened the can with a pocket knife. She fished the parking lot. I said, "You realize you are fishing in a parking lot?" She did. Eventually she gave up on that method and tried scooping them out manually. She got her hands on two large carp. She could have got them but she didn't want to cause them any pain even though she knew she had to destroy them if she caught them. She said the carp were very muscular. In total we fished in four spots and caught no fish. The DNR person who was monitoring the boats coming and going at the public landing said the heavy rains made for poor fishing. We told them about the Asian carp in the parking lot and they said they would look into it. We estimated about 50 carp in that parking lot. Later that day we hiked to In-Yan-Teopa. This is a rock with a hole in it at Frontenac State Park. This natural limestone arch is perched on top of a bluff. There are burial mounds in this park that indicate people were living and dying here way back to 400 B.C. Some of the best trails for birdwatching and fishing were flooded so we were unable to go there.  Maybe next time?