September Lac Seul, Part 2.

Pete's 40 inch Northern Pike

Although the 2016 open water fishing season is winding down with about another 30 days of comfortable fishing, my current situation with the restrictions on Lake Mille Lacs as well my newly found opportunity to fish Lac Seul in Canada on a somewhat frequent basis has me looking at this season as a success.  Normally my routine has been opening on Leech Lake, maybe 12 - 15 trips to Mille Lacs with some time on the river thrown in there.  Occasionally the summer may be interrupted with a trip to South Dakota or some other exotic place however this year it was not in the cards. Looking back I suspect I have fished just as many days as what I would call normal however they were concentrated, like in my Lac Seul fishing, in 3 to 4 days of focused walleye chasing rather than a day here and there.  I was just commenting a few days ago, and those who know me and my love for Lake Mille Lacs would find this statistic interesting but my new Evinrude has pumped more Lac Seul water through it than anywhere else, at least 530 miles and over 30 hours of running hours this year alone.  My normal trips to Mille Lacs is about 50 miles run and maybe 4 hours running time.  I feel bad for the lack of time spent on Mille Lacs however the issues on the lake makes it difficult to commit any serious time and even more critical is it is difficult to find anyone who wants to fish the day with me. Most of my trips to Mille Lacs has been with people that are outside my normal circle of fishing friends.  The other thing of consequence is that my new boat is taking a lot longer to get used to fishing Mille Lacs, wheel vs tiller control.  You know they say...it can be difficult to teach and old dog new tricks however Lac Seul fishing has my boat written all over it.  I was looking forward to the fall trolling bite on Mille Lacs however they closed the walleye catch and release season on September 6th, so much for that.  Being able to go to Lac Seul on September 13th pretty much makes up for my missed September fall bite on Mille Lacs as we got to fish 3 days in a row and for a couple of those days the bite was slow but between 3 of us we did land over 150 walleyes in the boat plus had enough to eat for the first 2 days.

Dan's Walleye off of Dan's Hole

We always are blessed with a good group of guys that fish Lac Seul however as I state before I am
pretty fussy with my boat.  Usually in the fall I have Pete and Dan in my boat, both are good fisherman and both have been trained really well to wash the sand off their shoes before getting into the boat.  This saves me a lot of work as sand and boat carpeting don't really go together very well.  It is almost impossible to vacuum it all out and it get's everywhere, especially in the lid hinges for my compartments. Fishing out of the Ranger is pretty nice as the seats are very comfortable, there is a lot of room, we have Sirius/XM radio, an onboard baitwell for our minnows, of course my opinion is the small jester of respect shown by these guys pay huge rewards!   The picture on the right is one of Dan and a nice 24 inch walleye out of one of my favorite places to fish in Tuk Bay we found 2 years ago, Dan's Hole.  Now Dan uses what Pete and I refer to as a Snoopy Pole.  It literally drives me crazy but Dan is pretty proficient with it catching his share of walleyes.  The problem I see is that he is constantly reeling against the drag and as a result is twisting the line like crazy. Being a closed face spin casting reel, he seems to do just fine however I am really tempted to buy him a significantly better reel, something we can tighten the drag down but yet still be closed faced. Maybe the other thing that drives me crazy is that he has his closed faced reel mounted on a spinning rod that is turned upside down.  Uffda is about all I can say yet he is a great guy to have in the boat, never complains about anything and is simply happy to catch fish, even doesn't mind when I make him clean his shoes off!  Beyond this I have spent the last week drying out and vacuuming the sand out of my boat, getting it ready for winter.  That doesn't mean that I am done fishing for the fall but time is definitely running out before deer hunting and ice fishing starts!

This week was the anniversary of the shooting that took my friend Ron Edberg's life.  Ron was a great guy and all of his friends miss him dearly, it's still a good time to reflect on life.  The weather is really starting to cool down a lot, I guess it's almost October already.  Next week I head to the Coil Winding Show in Chicago where I plan on seeing a couple of great friends in the business and start planning our early December fishing trip off of Marco Island, Florida.  That should be a perfect time depending on the when we can get out on the ice.  I have to take my tires off of my Ice Cabin and get them resealed as they are leaking air, too much to do, not enough time!!!