Back to Lake Osakis again

Nice Bass, my only fish

First of all it can be challenging to come up with a topic every week, especially if you've taken the weekend off from fishing to work on other less important things such as mowing or getting stuff done around the house.  When I ran across my old picture album last week it brought back memories of 1997 when fishing in Cabo San Lucas and it's funny, the pictures took my memory back to that time but it seemed to skip 2008 when I first posted the very exact same story and pictures on my October 6th post, amazing!  Oh well today is a new day and what I know is a new post. Because it was forecasted to rain on Sunday, Lory and I decided to try Lake Osakis again on Saturday to see if we can run into some of those nice crappies and maybe a walleye or two. With the temperatures predicted in the 90's and strong south winds, a day on the water might feel good.  Osakis is straight up Interstate 94 about 105 miles northwest of the house.  It's an hour and 45 minute drive, about 30 minutes further than Mille Lacs but it does seem longer.  Arriving around 1:00 Lory backed the trailer into the water as I started the outboard to back it off the trailer. The minute I hit reverse the motor came to an abrupt halt, not thinking about the bungee cord around the prop to prevent it from spinning while towing was still attached. A second time did the same thing before the realization hit me, the strap is still on.  Lory pulled the boat up carefully enough to jump out and remove the strap that was now wrapped tight around the lower housing, back it in again and this time it worked. life sure gets frustrating sometimes!  Our first stop was a nice hump that seemed to have walleye written all over it.  After 5 drifts across we changed our minds and headed to the area where we caught a few crappies the last time.  Almost immediately we marked schools of fish that were in 16 - 18 feet of water and they seemed to be stationary.  Our first thought, this should be pretty easy, like spearing fish in a barrel.

2 nice Crappies

Lory quickly caught the first crappie, a very nice 12 inch fish, seems like we were in for a great session!  We stayed on the school as well as others but those fish were not much in the mood to bite as Lory nailed another one and that was about it. It's pretty frustrating for sure as you know they are down there, you know they are nice fish, and you know you're not that bad of a fisherman. Oh well, maybe we are when it comes to mid season crappies.  I know from my ice fishing experiences that crappies can be finicky with needing just the right presentation.  Maybe we should have had minnows with slip bobber to be more effective, who knows.  It is definitely worth trying again as one can see that there are a lot of nice fish in Lake Osakis and it is worth doing some more exploring for sure.  It is a fairly large lake and this time of year it has quite a few weeds along with that slimy clumps of algae near the shorelines.  We did enjoy watching the western grebes work the depths with their young.  Usually there were two dull colored almost grown grebes with their parents swimming in the open water.  The hen would dive down and 15 - 30 seconds later would surface with a minnow in her bill as the young would race to see who get's the newly caught morsel. It was easy to watch this over and over again but we were the ones needing to catch the fish!  If you think about it, there had to be a ton of baitfish in the lake as the surface was covered with groups of 3 and 4 grebes all feeding on minnows and usually where there are minnows there are larger fish as well.  Actually there are so many grebes that you really need to be careful when you drive across the lake as they don't move very fast and one would hate to hit any my mistake.

It is a really busy time of the year as the personal stuff has accumulated to be a crazy last part of August through September.  With reunions, weddings, Labor day, and fishing trips it will be a challenge to get everything done in time.  The good news is that Bruce has set our fall trip to Lac Seul for September 21 - 25th and I will be bringing the new boat along.  My good friend Mark Taylor set me up with a friend of his that runs a company called Mat Crafters, which makes custom floor mats for businesses.  Mark had given me a large heavy duty floor mat and this guy would cut if for me however we decided it was too heavy so he picked a lighter, more flexible material.  Using my existing removeable carpet as a pattern he cut it perfectly.  I did order snaps and an installation tool to add the snaps to secure to the floor which will be really nice.  Now I have a heavy duty carpet to use in the boat when we are at Lac Seul, it holds sand really well and should help to keep the boat properly clean which means I won't have to yell at Pete as much!  This trip my brother Steve is going with which I after he invited me to go with him to Canada a few years ago, is a great payback.