I tried to achieve some balance in my life by taking a few days off to go fishing on Lake Erie with my son. We chartered a boat for three days—just the two of us. If you’ve never been walleye fishing on a trolling boat (we hadn’t), it’s a bit different from what you would expect, and it was a lot more work than we bargained for.

The crew consisted of the captain (Nate), the first mate (Ed), my son, and me. When we showed up at 6 a.m., it seemed like a normal charter—we sat there trying to wake up while Nate and Ed prepared the boat for departure. We headed out onto the lake in search of the delicious toothy critters and watched the glowing horizon with anxious excitement.

That’s when we got the surprise of the trip.

Nate and Ed got out 10 fishing poles. By my math, there were only two anglers aboard. “Gee, that’s gonna be a lot of lines to manage,” I thought to myself. Little did I know.

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