Trout Fishing with Bill

Absolutely a Beautiful View from the boat landing

Last week was quite busy, busy enough that my usual weekly post didn't make it.  One of the best reasons was that I had to prepare for my annual trout fishing day with my friend Bill Lundeen.  Admittedly it really doesn't take much on my part however the excuse sounds pretty good!  We settled on Friday as a date as the first part of October has been quite wet, yet there was a good reason to get our date finalized fairly soon as it isn't getting any warmer out.  As it is, there was snow on the ground as I approached Onamia, as well the standing water in the ditches has a thin crust of ice overlaying them.  It was still 30 degrees as I pulled into Bill's driveway at his newly remodeled home on Cove Bay.  It is sort of strange not meeting Bill at the corner tackle shop, as he officially sold his business, Lundeen's Tackle Castle, about 2 months agos ago.   35 years ago I fished Mille Lacs almost exclusively.  Living in Brooklyn Park at the time, my normal route up to the lake was to take Highway 47 to Isle and would stop at Portside to get any bait I needed.  When I moved to Dayton, the new route to Mille Lacs was up 169 and my new bait shop became Lundeen's Tackle Castle.  We have become great friends that essentially started as a business relationship, and it's been a great one!  We have trout fished every year since 2014 and this was our 5th trip to our secret lake that will remain so!  October is a beautiful month to fish as you can see on the picture above.  It is a small lake that is quite deep, over 100 feet and we speculate that it may have been an old mine pit at one time.  The water is crystal clear and has a landing but not for a traditional boat/trailer as one has to carry the boat down to the lake.  As we get

Bucket full of trout.

older it isn't getting any easier for sure, and my spot is in the front of the canoe, that in itself is a challenge!  It takes about an hour to get used to sitting in the canoe, but eventually one get's his sea legs and we spent over 5 hours to get our 10 rainbow trout.  this year wasn't my best performance as my attempt to try a different tactic didn't turn out so good.  Normally we use small hand tied crawler harnesses with a smaller spinner blade on them.  Deciding to try inline spinners, I did catch the first fish but really struggled after that.  Luckily I did get a few more hits but Bill was the star of the show this trip.  It probably was as simple as changing my lure however its not that easy in the canoe and as well, attached to my line was a Water Wolf Camera, which I used last year to get some great shots of the trout hitting my lure.  It is heavy and bulky, maybe that made all the difference.  I don't know but again, not complaining.  Looking at the first picture, one get's the idea of how peaceful and beautiful it was on Friday!  By the end of the day we headed home with a nice bag of rainbow trout.  Not terribly big, maybe 10 - 13" they are excellent on the grill.  Although planted in the lake, by fall their flesh has turned a light pink color and are just delicious wrapped in foil and thrown on the grill.  It is surprising how well these fish fight and the first one on the line almost pulled my pole out of my arms.  It was a great day on the water with my good friend Bill.  Admittedly the canoe is getting more precarious as I get older and may have to tackle that problem in the future!  Maybe we will start looking for a more flat bottom boat to make fishing a little easier.  We'll see as there are plenty of them on Craigslist and I don't think it would be that bad to haul it around.  That will be a great discussion for the ice house!

New Snowflap System

The other item that has taken a bunch of time is getting a new set of receiver mounted snowflaps ready for this years ice fishing season.  These flaps are necessary to help keep the snow from accumulating on the front of the wheel house as it's pulled down the road.  They do work pretty good however last year I was determined to get a new pair that will give even better protection to my wheel house.  Having basically assembled them, it became evident that my receiver ball mount would not work as the snowflap assembly was too thick to allow the mount to get far enough back in the receiver to get the hitch pin through.  Figuring the weather is changing fast, I'd better get going on getting this taken care of.  Really all that needed to be done was to get an extended ball mount then cut the actual flaps to the right height, securing all the bolts and do the final adjustments.  Well, try to find and extended ball mount, it's not that easy as Northern Tool has a lot of stuff, just not one with a 3 inch rise.  The guy at Northern was very nice and suggested I go back to U-haul up the road.  They had just what I needed and with a few measurements and actually hooking up the ice house gave me the drop created by the tongue weight, whether the rise was adequate, and the final adjustments needed to get that perfect fit.  Cutting off the bottom of the flaps with an ever handy utility knife, tightening everything up.  The last task is to attach a 2 5/16" ball to the mount and everything should be good to go.  These new flaps extend out about 4 inches from the bumper and hopefully will give me better coverage.