In the pre-dawn of Saturday morning, even though we were launching our battered OD-painted duck boat piled high with decoys and the other fellow at the southern Minnesota lake access, we were both on the same page.

True, we were loaded to the gunwales for the 9 a.m. waterfowl opener and he was going to troll some crankbaits for some early fall walleyes.

But someplace beneath our mountain of decoys, shotguns, the coffee Thermos and gear bags, a bucket of fathead minnows and a couple of fishing poles lurked.

Yes, the waterfowl opener held the promise of a few opportunities at popping a few caps at ducks, possibly some geese.

But in keeping with a tradition of avoiding the opening day competition of claiming a patch of water on such traditional waterfowl lakes as Swan or Middle, we once again were on a lake known more for its opportunities for finned rather then feathered quarry.

Indeed, last winter, the healthy population of walleyes that inhabitant this lake yielded several meals of walleye fillets to this angler.

As for ducks, well, the lake has been much less kind.

On last year’s opener, Dale Vanthuyne and I chalked up a goose egg on a day marked by heavy rain and gale-force winds. Except for a lone blue-winged teal we only half-heartedly swung on, in-range ducks were pretty much a no-show. It was a similar story on the previous two openers, as well.

But if there were few ducks, then at least there were fewer hunters to go with it.

And for all of our lack of success, we nevertheless felt duty-bound to once again greet the opener from the same thin stand of cattails.

This year, the difference was that we planned to do a little fishing to kill the time before we could attempt to kill any ducks.

So two hours before the 9 a.m. legal shooting time, we were standing shoulder-to-shoulder in knee-deep water casting lively fatheads, hoping a walleye with its fall feedbag on might swim by.

What we saw coursing the skies didn’t bode much promise. We spotted nary a duck as we fished.

At 8 a.m., with an hour remaining until shooting time, we began setting our spread of goose and duck decoys.

At 8:05 a.m., a handful of Canada geese flew low over the lake, disappearing.