Monday, September 24, 2018

Lac Seul, Last Trip of the Year.

Sunset at Chamberlain Narrows
Monday September 17th was the start of the last trip of the year to Lac Seul Outpost.  After a year's absence, our good fried Dan Sadler was graciously able to join us again on our fall trip to Chamberlain Narrows.  Dan was even gracious enough and offered to pull my boat up, which was very nice of him.  Arriving at the pole shed at 5:30 we had everything loaded and ready to go in 15 minutes.  Besides gas the next stop was T. Pattenn Cafe in Orr, Minnesota to meet Bruce, Wayne and the new guy, Barry Blazevic for breakfast.  After our fill of a good homemade breakfast next stop was the Holiday in International Falls to fill up the vehicles and boats for the long trek to Sioux Lookout.  Dan decided to stop at the Duty Free store to stock up on some Crown Royal before we went over the border.  Unfortunately when asked what he had, he wasn't quite accurate with our counts so I corrected him as I had it written down.  the customs officer saw I had it written down so she asked for the paper, which we obliged.  I have a theory on border crossings and alcoholic beverages.  I think that if you answer the questions directly, they really don't have that much time to add it all up in their head, this time it was written down so for only the second time since 2013, we had to pay duty.  Not that it's a big deal, as we have been over our legal limit many times yet I find it interesting that this time was different and I attribute it to having wrote it down, oh well.  Next stop was Sioux Lookout to get some large minnows then off to Deception to launch the boats and head north to the cabins, a 34.5 mile ride across the water.  This time of year the weather was often cooler and it was no exception.  Arriving at the landing around 5:30 that gave us just enough time to get into camp before sunset, which we did.  As you can see Sunsets are beautiful and I just happened to catch this one from our deck.  A great way to end an evening.

So fishing was good but not the best we have seen over the years.  Our first day was spent in Tuk
A day's worth of keepers, most for supper, some in the Freezer.
Bay, just south of camp.  It is one of my favorite areas but the fish seemed to be awfully scattered this season.  I am not sure if it was the late spring, the hot summer, low water, what ever, we had to look hard for our fish.  Once we found them it was game on for a while before we had to move again.  I was surprised at the amount of boats in Tuk, I am sure we saw at least 10, which can get crowded.  Never the less we did pretty good by the Island and a place I call Pete's point. We weren't getting a lot of slot fish (16 - 17-3/4 inches) but we did get quite a few in that 18 to 22 inch range.  Needing to get enough for our fish fry we headed to what we now call Craig's Corner, on the north edge of Chamberlain Narrows, it is usually good for some action, we accomplished our goals for the day and headed back to camp.  As stated before I tend to clean all of the fish in camp after my first trip there seeing a guy hack their walleyes.  Well Barry was interested in helping me which was fine however I told him I was fussy.  After watching him clean his first 2 fish I told him he would be better at skinning them and as he states, I fired him.  We had fun and by the end of the trip he was getting pretty good.  It was nice to have someone to talk to while filleting the fish. 

Next post I will have some pictures of the guys and their walleyes, unfortunately I only had a few fish large enough to warrant pictures. As well, I have to wait till the guys send the ones of me!

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

The 29th Annual Kramer Open

Wild Marsh Sporting Clays Course.
Saturday was the 29th Annual Kramer Open hosted by a good friend, Dave Kramer.  Dave originally started the Kramer Open as a means to raise money for the family of a good friend who passed away, Doug Leu.  Dave has done this now for 29 years and over that time Doug's wife had passed away leaving their children.  My involvement began a number of years ago when my great and late friend, Tom Emmons invited me to shoot the Kramer.  Although a lot of the players have changed over the years, it is still fun to get out on the first Saturday after Labor Day and shoot 100 birds at Wild Marsh Sporting Clays, I used to shoot a league there a number of years ago and it was a lot of fun.  It was a 500 bird league with the requirement to shoot 100 birds a month for April, May, June, July, and August.  You could basically shoot it anytime within the designated time for the month so there was zero pressure to show up every week and shoot, which was nice.  Of course time always flies by quickly and it would seem as though we would barely get in our 100 birds before the next month started.  The Kramer is alot of fun as I do not shoot a sporting clays league there anymore however I really enjoy the shooting and the challenges of hitting the clay targets in the configurations that they set up.  Usually the courses are set up like a golf course.  At the Wild Marsh they have the Green Course, Blue Course and Red Course.  In previous shoots there would be 9 stations per course, 50 targets sort of like a golf course.  This year's setup was 16 stations on the Green Course, 14 with 6 targets and 2 with 8 to make a total of 100.  It certainly made for a fast course completion as the stations were fairly close together, I think it only took about 3.5 hours, about an hour faster than usual.  So out of 41 guys I finished in 7th place with 82 out of 100 targets hit, right behind my friend and co-worker, Mike Scheunke, who was on my team along with Lory Brasel and 2 new guys, Tim and Dan.  Mike shoots quite often in a league and hit 3 more than myself with a score of 85.  These are not bad scores at all considering how rusty one gets after a year of not shooting.  Anyway it was fun and afterwards we all gathered at Dave's house for some refreshments, a Taco dinner, and the infamous Junk auction where Dave raises money for the Leu family.  All in good fun, I bought some obscure garden tools for $1.00 and did donate some extra funds to get a set of seven In-Fisherman how to DVD's a pretty nice set and will come in handy for ice fishing entertainment.  Dave had a nice new in the box Browning A-Bolt .308 rifle on the auction but they did not call my number on that one, which was OK.  All in All it was a fun time, something that I look forward to every year as it is always on the weekend after Labor Day.  Not that I need any excuse but it also serves as a great memory of my times with my late friend Tom Emmons.

New Power Center Distribution Terminals
Last week I had updated my progress on rewiring the boat to fix a number of electrical issues I have been seeing when I fish Canada.  One of the things that is probably causing my issues could be low voltage at the docks where I plug in at night, preventing the batteries from fully charging overnight.  This has an accumulative effect as the batteries are not at their peak of charge and performance.  There are 2 things that I have done.  First is to significantly beef up the electrical circuits that feed the console power.  Although I am not sure what the original configurations were, I bypassed it and as stated last week, ran #6 ga from the batteries in the floor to the console.  This is more than enough to assure good power to my electronics.  I finally received the terminal blocks and mounted them where my electronics hookup area is and started from there.  In the past I had discussed using a boost circuit to help however when I reconfigured it, the circuit kept blowing the automatic circuit breakers that are standard with my Ranger.  For sure I could run the converter straight off the battery via the distribution terminal without issues so I put a 20 Amp fuse in line for protection and reconfigured all of my power connections so all of my add on electronics such as the Lowrance HDS Carbons, SonicHub 2, Structure Scan 3D and other electronics would now have a boost voltage of 14.6VDC assuring trouble free operation.  In addition I replaced my USB power socket with a new one that has a red LED voltage readout on it (much easier to see in the sunlight than my previous blue LED) then tied it directly to the distribution terminals.  Now I can monitor the battery voltage from the console, it is pretty slick.  One of the other things is building a boost transformer for the low dock voltage in Canada.  At the Fisherman's Cove where I was last month the voltage at the end of my extension cord was 92VAC.  I suspect that it may be similar at the Lac Seul Outposts, where I am going on Monday.  If so maybe I can fix the problem from both ends, increase the dock voltage that powers my on board battery chargers to assure a full charge over night, and fix the internal power inside the boat so if there is an issue, it is minor.  Time will tell!  Either way I am fishing next Monday through Friday so my next post could be a week late. Hopefully it will be worth it. 

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

It's Never Too Late...Sometimes It Is

Leon and His Granddaughter, That's my Leon!
There are often times when you wait to do something and after doing it people say, Well it's better late than never......or It's never too late.  Unfortunately that is not always the case.  On Friday night I was tying up some snells for catfishing on the river.  Using turned eye circle hooks, snelling them was a great way to assure the proper hook set for these types of hooks.  There are many ways to tie a snelled hook and the method I use was taught to me by my friend Leon Lambert.  Leon was a purchasing agent for one of my customers in Pueblo, Colorado and we often talked on the phone.  One thing lead to another and it was soon discovered that we enjoyed fishing alot.  So much that one time in the early 90's he had to travel to the corporate offices in La Crosse, Wisconsin for meetings so I arranged to meet him and we both went fishing in my boat below the dam in Alma, Wisconsin for walleyes.  It was the first part of April and luckily turned out to be great day to fish, few boats on the river, the water wasn't too high or fast, we had a great time.  We did catch a few fish, it was a little early in the season but it really turned out to be a blind date as Leon or I had never met, we just met and went fishing.  Well that date cemented what turned out to be a life long friendship.  That friendship included a few trips fishing in Colorado, once on the Arkansas River, west of Pueblo.  Action wasn't fast or furious but never the less it was an adventure.  One winter's day we had a conference at our facility in Fort Collins.  I brought our UL guy, Rick Barthel with me and we arrived on a Saturday, destined to fish the weekend before heading to the plant on Monday.  Our destination was DeWeese Reservoir, about 50 miles West of Pueblo, near Westcliffe, Colorado.  The plan was to ice fish for trout in the morning then head to Eleven Mile Reservoir and maybe catch some larger fish.  DeWeese is at 7700 feet of elevation and the ice was pretty thick.  Leon didn't have much for ice fishing except a hand auger and some older equipment.  In the meantime, being from Minnesota, Rick and I were well equipped as we brought our made for ice fishing poles, tackle, and we even brought a depth finder, my Vexilar FL8.  There were a few people on the ice however by the time we got set up, we were the stars of the show.  Everyone was fishing with short casting rods and spin cast reels while we were finesse fishing with our equipment, and quite successful I might add.  After catching a number of trout we packed up and headed to another of Leon's spots, Eleven Mile.  Unlike DeWesse, and even though it was at a higher elevation, there was no snow on the ice, it was bare, wind sweeped, and treacherous.  Of course our fishing destination was across from our landing and about halfway there Leon slipped and fell on his wrist.  In quite a bit of pain we turned around and brought him home.  That evening we had learned Leon had broke his wrist and had it in a cast.  The good news is that he learned quite a bit about finesse ice fishing and eventually bought the electronics to improve his game.  Leon retired about 11 years ago in 2007, we stayed in touch but as it goes, time flies fast enough.  Well tying those snells made me think of Leon so I decided that it's been too long, and dialed his number.  Being around 9:40 it might have been a little late as he did not answer the phone.  Well at least his voice mail worked so I left a pointed message and figured I'd call in the morning.  My phone rang at 7:30 and by the time I got to it, too late.   Well I'll call later, which I did and his wife Carol answered.  The first thing to come out of my mouth was...Where's that husband of yours?  I sensed from her tone that it wasn't going to be something I wanted to hear and I was right as she told me that Leon had passed away 10 days ago on August 20th of a heart attack.  At that point one is speechless.  I suppose it had been 2 years or so since I had spoken to Leon, it was now too late.  Leon was one of those guys who fit the saying....Friends are like stars, you might not always see them but you know they are always there.  Well Leon, you are always in my heart, God Bless you and hopefully I will head in the same direction that I know you are.  See you my friend.  If one is ambitious simply go to the left hand side and you can click on Leon's name and see the other posts about him!

21 inch Smallmouth Bass, a Trophy
So what would Leon expect me to do, sit around and moan or go fishing and enjoy life.  So with a heavy heart and a head spinning, we did what I am sure would have made Leon happy and went out on the River for a few hours on Saturday night with my neighbor Todd, the catfish king!  The plan was simple, 4 miles up river and cast for smallies till about 7:30 then head to below the island and fish for whatever is eating night crawlers.  Although Todd professed to understand how to cast a levelwind, admittedly it was painful to watch.  Our strategy was to cast crankbaits into the shore and reel them so they either came straight back to the boat or slightly downstream (Last weeks post dealt with that!).  About a half mile down from our stopping point where there was some rip rap along the shore with about 10 feet of calmer water before the current break was, a huge fish hit my lure and right away one knew it was nice.  It was in the same area that a large smallie took a swipe at my bait last week, this one was solidly hooked.  With some coaxing Todd finally got the net in place, head first, and he successfully netting this beautiful 21 inch smallmouth, my personal best.  We let her go after taking a few pictures, she was a beast for sure.  We did manage a few more fish even as Todd spent at least half his time undoing bird's nests in the reel.  He finally got the hang of it somewhat just as we approached 7:30 so we put everything away and headed downstream.  Anchoring just below Cloquet Island we did manage a few smaller catfish, another rock bass yet I don't really think that is correct and am doing some more research.  Todd caught another Redhorse before it got too late and we had to go.  The motor on the jon boat is still acting up somewhat as it seems to flood very easily.  The float is probably bad in the carburetor,  another project on the list.  Using the trolling motor to go back to the landing, that was working for a while but one last try on the Mercury and it started.

Beautiful ending to a evening on the River.
It was a long day for sure but an evening on the river is magical.  While anchored and looking upriver I took this picture of the sunset.  It was like Leon was smiling down on us and congratulating us on the good evening of fishing, like I know he would.  In the meantime there has been a lot of work done on the Ranger.  Having electrical problems from the last trip to Lac Seul, my goal is to have all of it fixed by the time we leave back to Chamberlain Narrows on September 17th.  It hasn't been that easy as Ranger's have these internal electronic circuit breakers that really work well but have their limitations.  The best thing was to run a separate power circuit from the battery to the front console then use that as a strong source for your electronics power needs, separate from the standard boat accessories.  Although not done, I have the 6 gauge cable ran, the ring terminals crimped, and awaiting my Amazon ordered power distribution terminal strips to make sure that the job is done professionally.  Hopefully it will all be done by the weekend as I need to also update my electronics before I go.  Lowrance's new upgrade allows one to now make your own maps as a previous update did using Sonar Charts Live.  The difference is one no longer needs to have the latest Navionic's Chip that has the current $99/year subscription attached to it.  The mapping option, down to .5 feet resolution is now a free option on Lowrance HDS Carbon's and Gen 3's.   The only thing one needs to do is download the software on a MicroSD card, insert it into the card slots on the device and turn it on.  The software will need a blank 32 gigabyte or less card to record the maps it creates. That's easy as you can now buy quality 32 gigabyte MicroSD for about $10 these days.  Amazing as when I started digital photography memory cards were $1 per megabyte, now it's less than $0.00032 per megabyte.