Red Hot Red

Parked on Red Lake

What a week of indecisiveness! Saturday I got a text from Russ Praught, he was in the tree stand and the talk around camp was the possibility of heading up to Red Lake with the wheel houses, bring the portables and either ATV out or walk out to the first break.  That first ice can be awesome and word was the Upper Red Lake was on fire with his friend catching 2 limits of 4 walleyes in a couple of hours.  Actually Mark Applen and I had discussed going up on the Friday after Thanksgiving and a quick call confirmed, he had a conflict on Saturday and had to be it town to attend.  On to Plan B, contact my good friend Keith Holtan to see if he had any interest.  Originally we were going to take Mark's wheel house up and leave it.  Plan B was to take my house up, park it on shore, and fish out of JR's.  Keith confirmed that he could go but would like to be back on Saturday which fit with my plans.  In the meantime Mark could not take the fishing reports and decided he would head up by himself early Friday morning and return in time for his Saturday night commitment.  On Thanksgiving the word came JR's were letting 1/2 ton pickups on the ice. So Mark headed out at 3:30 on Friday morning while I waited till 9:00, getting caught up on my extended trip back home on Thanksgiving.  Keith confirmed and I would pick him up around noon, we'd be at JR's by 3:00.  With the Salem hooked up I headed north first stopping at Bill's to get bait and propane before continuing on to Brainerd to pick up Keith.  In the meantime Mark called to confirm JR's were letting trucks and wheel houses out and he was on the lake making his way towards the rock pile.  That's a game changer as we would no longer need any portables.  As I pulled into Garrison a text from Mark confirmed, s
tarted at 11:00 and by 11:16 he had 2 fish in the bucket.  At 11:25 he repeated his text, 4 in the bucket, I'm done!  Uffda, his limit in 20 minutes and I'm still 4 hours away.  Arriving at 3:00 we said hi to the crew at JR's, paid Adam, and slowly drove on the ice heading west towards Mark. A mile or so down the lake we spotted his house and pulled up about 100 feet away.  Coming over to help we had everything set up by 4:00 with lines in the water.  I took all of one minute to have a fish in the bucket and with Mark anxious to get back to JR's for supper we went to work.  By 4:30 Keith and I had our 8 walleyes not counting the 6 or so we let go, time to go back in.  Geez, we had only been there 30 minutes and had to go.  Of course the strategy was simple, get back to JR's and clean/cook our fish before the crowd gets crazy.

40 inch Northern at Midnight

After stuffing our faces with fresh fried walleye and Russ's World Famous Tartar Sauce, it was time to head back to the Salem to settle in for night.  Keith and I decided to watch an Alaskan based movie called The Big White starring Robin Williams, Holly Hunter, and Woody Harrelson.  When my cousin Greg, Paul, brother Steve and I were in Alaska the discussion started about the best movies ever.  My choice was "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", cousin Greg's was "What about Bob", Steve's was "Second Hand Lion's" and Paul's was "The Big White".  These are all great movies and definitely worth putting on your list as I have all 4 in the wheel house.  In the meantime we continued to catch walleyes although not as fast and furious as a few hours later but it was OK as we were getting tired. Setting the rattle reels for the night it was time to get some sleep.   About 11:30 all hell broke loose on 3 of the 4 reels.  Keith had set the hook on a big fish and it decided to wrap around the remaining reels before it was subdued.  Pulling it out of the hole the fish kept coming and coming, all 40 inches of it.  A quick picture of Keith holding the fish after jumping out of bed and he let it go.  That's pretty exciting for sure.  Luckily the rest of the rattle reels were silent for the remainder of the night as we woke up at 7:30, ready for the morning bite.  Keith doesn't drink coffee and Mark showed up just in time to fill up my mug which was appreciated.  He had 3 fish and was looking for a 4th as he planned on leaving withing an hour or so.  The bite started picking up around 8:00 and we were able to help Mark with his needs and fill up our bucket with 8 really nice 17 - 19.5 inch walleyes by noon.  We continued fishing till 3:00 before packing up and parking the Salem behind JR's till next time.  After cleaning the fish we headed south for the long journey back to Brainerd, then home.  Although we only stayed about 23 hours with another 10 hours of driving and 2 hours of setting up and tearing down, it was quite a trip.  The walleye action was incredible and it was amazing to think we are at least a month ahead of where we were last year.

Successful Morning's fishing on Red Lake

Fishing on Red Lake has been nothing short of phenomenal, much so that the limits have changed for December 1st to February 22, 2015.  Because our trip was still in November we were allowed 4 walleyes under 20 inches and although 1 of those fish could be over 26 inches we would never keep one that big.  On Monday the possession limit drops to 3 and the length drops to under 17 inches. There has been a lot of fish taken out of the lake in the last couple of years and though the walleye population seems healthy I don't think it's going to bother anyone too much if they cut the harvest back somewhat.  With the Lake Mille Lacs restrictions of 2 fish between 18 and 20 inches, the change in Leech Lake and Winnibigoshish perch populations, and the huge increase in fisherman using wheel houses (Count me in!) Red Lake is almost the perfect storm.  A good population of fish, little structure so almost any spot can be a good spot, the ability to hold a lot of houses more than offsets the 4 1/2 hours of drive time.  I suspect that eventually things will change, the fishing will die down on Red,  Lake of the Woods - Leech - Winnie - Mille Lacs will become more popular and the hope is they become more wheel house friendly.  Right now it seems as though 50% of the wheel houses are at Red right now and will be for another couple of months.  I know that as the years progress it is much more enjoyable fishing out of my portable RV with holes in the floor than it is dragging the ATV and my Clam X2 Thermal, unloading it and finding a spot to fish.  It also nice to hit these further away lakes and have the ability to spend a couple of days enjoying the outdoors rather than simply loading and unloading your stuff and leaving right away.  I'll always have the portables as it's really not a bad way to fish, in fact I'm looking to upgrade my one man Clam to a fully thermal model as my go to panfish shelter.   I am finishing this post on a Delta Airlines A320 bound for San Diego for our annual fall TTA (The Transformer Association) meeting.  The 70 degree weather will be a nice change to the below normal temperatures we have been having in Minnesota.  No trip would be complete without something to do with fishing and Friday will be no different as my friend Bill Dull has arranged a half day charter off the coast of San Diego to fish the kelp beds.  This is something I have yet to do so I'm pretty excited.  Going with will be my Golden Brother CK from Taiwan as well as Chris and Jeffrey Chen, Randy Eller, and Lyle Shaw.  Here's hoping we'll have some nice pictures for next week.  Getting back on Saturday, Jeffrey is flying in on Sunday to visit our factory.  We are planning to go to the St. Paul Ice Fishing Show, it should be an interesting experience as Jeffrey i from Taiwan and I can assure you there is no ice fishing there!