Time to Head back to JR's

Matt and Christina with some beautiful ocean Silver Salmon

Christmas has come and gone.  With both my wife and I's parents gone, Christmas has become an open ended affair as we have no children, plenty of invitations, but truthfully little incentive to actually drive 3 hours to go anywhere, I guess we are just getting old!  Of course it doesn't help that I will not get to drive until January 22nd so we just took it easy this year.  There were 2 main events, Sunday evening we drove to Mille Lacs and had supper with the Lundeens....Bill, Kathy, and Bill's 92 year old mother, Phyllis.  Christmas Day was spent with our good friends the Taylors, truth be told they are as much of family as anyone in our lives, Mark was the first friend I met after moving to Minneapolis and we have stayed good friends come thick and thin! Mark's oldest son Matt along with his wife Christina, hosted a fine afternoon with the Taylor family as well, Christina's uncle Henry, of Team Walleye fame!  Mark was one of the original 4 guys that started Team Walleye in 1973 on Leech Lake and Matt started coming in 1991 when he and the other boys were 10 years old.  It's been a lot of fun but what is more rewarding is the fact that we have stayed good friends all of these years.  Mark, Jack, their sister Linda, both their parent, all of their kids are truly family and I am definitely looking forward to the 2019 Minnesota Walleye fishing opener on Leech Lake again, this will be the 46th annual.  Not a bad run and it reminds me to get my money into Mark Mayerich next week!

New Stromberg Carlson 5000# Jacks

Last Friday we were able to pick up my repaired wheel house from Minneapolis Trailer Sales, in Rogers Minnesota.  I would like to give them a great recommendation as they knew exactly what was needed to fix everything and did it just in time for me to get it home and repacked for this weekend.  I had all of my electric jack replaced on the Salem Ice Cabin.  It ran about $450 each installed which I didn't think was too bad at all.  The original equipment has Lippert jacks and were rated for 3500 pounds of lift.  Although this was probably adequate, over the course of owning this wheel house, sometimes the jacks would struggle, especially when things got a little twisted.  Actually I blew a couple of 30A fuses when you could hear the motor groaning at you when lifting.  It was getting worse with time so when replacing I chose 5000 pound rated jacks, 43% more lifting power.  The only real problem is that the previous Lippert had a feature which included an internal (to the jack) switch which could be operated from the inside of the wheel house.  They had stopped working and we seldom used them so I went with their recommendation for trouble free jacks, the Stromberg Carlson brand.  I am ok with it, just don't want to go through the same problem as last time when we were on Red, one of the jacks didn't work and the front jack continued to struggle.  Kevin Aiona, my brother Steve and I are heading back to Red Lake on Friday.  We were to get a major storm between now and then however it has narrowed and moved north as it is only predicted to rain around here.  Red is saying 4 - 8 inches in the next couple of days but that should be plowed good by the time we get there and that should really turn on the walleyes.  Hopefully there should be some good pictures next week! I hope everyone had a great Holiday week and now we get back to some serious fishing!

Red Lake at Last!

JR and I posing for a picture!!  My Hero

With reports from JR's Corner Access allowing 1/2 ton trucks with single axle wheel housed out on the ice last weekend, it was time to get the proverbial show on the road!  Successfully recruiting my brother Steve to drive my rig, pulling the Salem, we picked up my good friend Keith Holtan north of Brainerd and headed north to Red Lake.  Our good friend Mark Applen was already on his way up and our other crew members, Randy and Russ Praught we somewhere in the mix.    A quick stop at Teal's in Cass Lake to fill up the truck and get some groceries (You never know if you are going to catch fish!) our next stop was in Blackduck for bait.  Timberline sports had a great selection of minnows so we got 6 dozen fatheads, a dozen rainbows and a dozen shiners, maybe too optimistic but in the grand scheme of things the price of minnows is not the biggest problem we have.  Arriving at JR's it was great to see him as we exchanged our annual welcome back messages!  I really like JR, he's quite a guy and claims he would do anything for me, which I was soon to find out.  After paying for the access, we headed out to the bridge that crosses the heave about 1.5 miles out form shore and after crossing the bridge we headed northwest to what is know as the Center Bar area.  Mark was already on the ice heading in the same direction however with hundreds of vehicles and wheel houses on the ice, it is difficult to see exactly where he was.  Unfortunately cell phone service can be sporadic as well.  After going west about 3 miles we ran into a road heading north and took a right which was in the direction of Center Bar.  We were looking for Mark's white GMC pickup and saw a few but the wheel house didn't look right.  About a mile up the road I noticed a wheel house with 3 vent covers that stick up out of the roof, a telltale sign of Mr. Applen's wheel house.  Here he drove his gray Chevrolet Avalanche, No wonder!!!  Nevertheless we caught up with him and after a quick discussion headed to the south end of the Center Bar.  Picking a spot I started drilling holes while Steve and Keith worked on disconnecting the wheel house and letting it down on the ice.  One big problem, the left electric axle jack wasn't working.  Apparently it had bound up during the summer and only turned a few revolution before binding up.  This wasn't good.  Having put a 3/4 inch socket and 1/2 inch ratchet

JR Flying off in the sunset!

just for these types of  situations, it was soon discovered that the deep well socket would be fine for the front jack however there was no room to get it in place for the axle jacks. Now what???  Locating some penetrating spray we removed any cover and dowsed the insides with the spray.  It seemed to have a little effect but no very much.  Just then a plane buzzed our location, it was JR in his Piper Cub outfitted with big tundra tires to land in these conditions.  Getting out of his plane he asked what the problem was.  Explaining the jack situation I mentioned that it might work if I can get a 3/4 inch short socket and ratchet to turn the shaft.  After looking in his plane he stated that he didn't have one but knew where there was one and he'd be right back.  Before I could argue he was in the air and 10 minutes later landed with the right socket.  A few turns in the right direction and the jack worked as it should, we were back in business.  JR said no problem as he flew off into the sunset.  Wow, that's what you call a real friend.  I am lucky to have a few like him, and they both own airplanes! Finally with everything set we got settled down for some serious fishing.  It was about 4:00 in the afternoon and the bite wasn't the greatest we decided to have dinner on the ice.  By 10:00 we had 3 fish and maybe let 4 more back, or walleye dinner at JR's would have to wait till tomorrow afternoon.

The unfortunate guy who went off to the right when they said not too!

Things got very interesting as time went on.  After settling in for the night we had at least 4 more walleyes on our rattle reels, it was sort of amazing that the outside temperature stayed above freezing. By noon on Saturday the outside temperature was 45 and the word on the ice was traveling fast, they were not letting any more vehicle cross the bridge as the warm weather was causing the ice to shift to quickly.  Some of our guys decided to get across the break and set up on the other side yet both Mark and I felt we should stick tight, after all the bite wasn't too bad and we figured they'd have to get us off sometime!  It was quite warm for sure as a steady stream of wheel houses were heading to shore. Between Mark and my house there were 4 guys and by 4:00 we had our 16 walleyes plus a number of real nice perch, it was time to head into JR's for our walleye dinner.  Rumor had it that a truck went through the ice and it was right, although they had the truck pulled out by the time we passed the area, the wheel house was still there sunk into the ice.  Luckily the truck didn't go totally through the ice, it simply dropped down onto the ice and a wrecker was able to pull it out.  I'm not sure what they are going to do with the wheel house but I am sure they have dealt with this before.  Of course this heightened the anxiety of the fisherman north of the break as word spread pretty quickly.  We went in anyway, cleaned the fish, and gave them to the bartender with my gluten free Zatarains Southern corn based fish coating.  It's actually very good, I think better than the shore lunch coating that they normally use when frying

Yes, we did get some walleyes!

and the cooks at JR's very nicely accommodates my wishes.  Usually the place is packed but the warm weather and the ice moving scared a lot of people.  After finishing our fish we headed back to the wheel house.  I have direcTV in the house but it can be a pain to set up as the cable connections are many.  just before we left I was successful in getting it to work so we were able to watch the Saturday night NFL game.  Not that exciting however we had been watching movies and you can only watch them so many times.  All day Saturday we watched Second Lions, The Big White, Planes Trains and Automobiles, all great movies.  It stayed what we would call quite warm through the night, got down enough to freeze any water on the ice, but we knew that we had better head out as early as possible because there were going to be a lot of guys crossing that bridge, and each time a vehicle crosses it degrades the situation a little bit at a time.  Finally getting packed up we headed for JR's.  After about 4 miles of cross country travel on the lake we arrived at the bridge that the resort guys were just finishing up moving it to a new spot along the break.  There must have been 50 truck/wheel houses lined up to get across the new bridge location.  There was a crack just before getting on the bridge, maybe 30 feet from the crack.  The gus had 2 large steel plates over it to provide a safe passage to drive over.  Once in place we started directing the guys to come through.  The first guy crossed the steel plates and on the ice, the ice sunk about an inch before rebounding.  I didn't like that at all but it held pretty well.  A 3/4 ton pickup with a tandem axle wheel house was next and that definitely put a strain on things, but he made it.  Actually he shouldn't of been out there and when he crossed the bridge his house got on the edge of the bridge and something punctured his tire, you could here it.  Luckily we told him to keep moving and after watching a number of truck cross I gave the keys to my brother and told him to quickly get in line as this wasn't going to last.  He and Mark crossed about the same time, maybe 15 and 16th, I figured another 25 trucks or so and that ice sheet that was moving would be done.  This was about 8:30 in the morning, my friend Andy came off about 9:30 and he had to wait 30 minutes while they repositioned the bridge again.  We just got across in time!

 Mark has the same wheel house that I have, a Salem Ice Cabin and on Saturday his furnace went out.  He had an electric heater with and with the outside temperatures being fairly warm, he was pretty comfortable, otherwise it would not have been so nice.  With my electric jacks not working and his furnace out we both decided to bring our house  back to the Cities to get them repaired.  He found someone in Ramsey, across the river that knew exactly what was wrong with his furnace and they are fixing it this week.  As for my jacks, I called the dealer where the house was originally purchased from and  not only did they not have a common sense solution for my fix, they informed me that I could not get in until after the first of January.  Thinking I might have to fix it myself and because the jacks are standard hitch jacks used on RV's Amazon had them but delivery was out past Christmas.  Doing more research and after calling the company to locate the nearest retail center, I ended up calling Minneapolis Trailer Sales in Rogers, MN, 10 minutes from the house.  This guy knew exactly what my problem was and had a viable solution to fix it, the ice house is at the shop with the plan to get it back before the weekend. All Should be good for the next planned trip to JR's on the 28th.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Getting Old

Dad loved Wildroot Hair Creme

As you can probably tell, no fishing last weekend.  However, I have a friend that is related to a good friend, Mark Mayerich.  Franklin lives on the Iron Range in northern Minnesota and admittedly we share a lot of the same values in life. To be honest,, I've only met Franklin a few times but he is one of those guys that because one shares similar values, we tend to stay email buddies. He sent this early this morning and it really hit home:

Yes, I am older than dirt!

Remember Slow Food? 

'Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'  'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up, I informed him.

 'All the food was slow.' 'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?'

'It was a place called 'at Home,'' I explained.  'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table,

and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.'

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage,so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table. But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it.

 Some parents NEVER owned their own house, never wore Levis, never set foot on a golf course, never traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at  Sears Roebuck or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck.  Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow) We didn't have a television in our house until I was 11. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6 a.m. And there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people. 

I was 19 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had. 

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line. 

Pizzas were not delivered to our home.  But milk was. 
All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers --Idelivered a newspaper, seven days a week. It cost 10 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 3 cents.  He had to get up at 6 AM every morning. On Saturday, I had to collect the 60 cents from his customers. My favorite customers were the ones who gave 

me 3 quarters and said to keep the change. My least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day. 

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing. 

Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it? 
MEMORIES from a friend : 
My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old. 

How many do you remember? 
Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.  (Like my Mustang)
Ignition switches on the dashboard. 
Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall. 
Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards. 
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals. 
Older Than Dirt Quiz : 
Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about. Ratings at the bottom. 
1. Blackjack chewing gum 
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water  
3. Candy cigarettes 
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles 
5. Coffee shops or diners with table side jukeboxes  
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers 
7. Party lines on the telephone 
8 Newsreels before the movie 
9. P.F. Flyers 
10. Butch wax  (that was our hair product) 
11.. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. (there were only 2 channels... 

12. Peashooters
13. Howdy Doody 
14. 45 RPM records 
15.S&H green stamps 
16. Hi-fi's 
17. Metal ice trays with lever 
18. Mimeograph paper 
19. Blue flashbulb 
20. Packards 
21. Roller skate keys 
22. Cork popguns  
23. Drive-ins 
24. Studebakers 
25. Wash tub wringers 
If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older

If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,
If you remembered 16-25 = You' re older than dirt! 
I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the best parts of my life. 

Jared and a nice mess of panfish

This brought back a lot of memories of long ago.  The list includes Butch Wax, well my dad loved Wildroot as I put the picture up of their ad.  He would always slick my brothers and my hair with this before going to Sunday School. I remember when McDonald's in Eau Claire had 15 cent hamburgers and 20 cent cheeseburgers.  Michael's Dairy used to deliver milk in returnable glass bottles to our house.  Every December, maybe a week before Christmas, they would haul a team of horses, our delivery guy would dress up as Santa, and they would pull a sled around town and give each customer a half gallon of ice cream as a present for being a loyal customer. I still remember you could hear the jingle of bells on the harness's as they traveled down the streets of Eleva.  We all can look back at what was as things change very quickly.  I wanted to share this as it was important to me.   So this is Fishin' with Dave, not Remembering Old Times with Dave however not getting out last week was killing me!  Ben Aiona sent me a picture of this nice batch of sunfish and perch, he still hasn't told me where he got them but never the less it's a nice bunch of fish, I am sure his son Jared had a good hand in all of this!  JR's is letting wheel houses out this week at Red, so the weekend is planned.  My brother Steve is driving up Thursday night to stay with a friend on the south side of Minneapolis and will meet me at the pole shed on Friday morning.  We pick up my friend Keith in Brainerd on the way to Red and hopefully will be set up and fishing by 4:00 in the afternoon.  With a little luck we can catch supper and head into JR's.  Our plan is to spend 2 nights leaving Sunday morning while leaving the wheel house at JR's till the end of January.  It will be great to both get out fishing and to see everyone again!  I hope you enjoyed the post.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

View from our Condo on Tybee Island, Georgia

Last Wednesday was the long anticipated trip to Savannah, Georgia for the fall TTA meeting.  Often these meetings are an opportunity to get together with some industry friends and go fishing, which we have done quite a few times now.  This trip to Savannah was a perfect time to go fishing as we have done when the conference was in Charlotte, NC and we fished Charleston for Sheepshead.  When we had our conference in Ponte Vedra Beach we fished the breakwaters of Mayport Florida so we were looking forward to fishing these Georgia marshes for redfish, sea trout, black drum, and sheepshead.  It was all set, my friend Phil rented two condos right on the Atlantic Ocean on Tybee Island, 20 miles east of Savannah.  Taking it easy on Friday night, 5:00 would come early as we had to be on the dock by 6:45.  The weather stated a 90% chance of rain however this was forecasted for the afternoon, our trip was 6 hours, and would end at 2:00 so we weren't too worried.  Getting ready to leave at 6:30 the cell phone rang, it was Miss Judy stating that there were small craft warnings as it appeared as though we had severe thunder storms both to the north and south of us, with the one to the south, substantial lightening.  Stating that we can't go out at 7:00 we should wait until 9:00 and see where we were at weather wise.  We talked again and reiterated that we just wanted to go out, any change would be good for us, we could do only 4 hours, anything to get out however at 8:30 she officially cancelled the trip.  Admittedly we were pretty disappointed yet we understand that it's up to the captain of the boat to decide the safety of it's guests and crew.   Personally I think we could have

Fresh Raw Oysters, Fabulous!

gone but there are 2 things about that thought, first it's not my decision and secondly hindsight is 20/20!  The end result is we had a great breakfast in a breakfast cafe on Tybee Island, I had one of the best omelet's ever, an Irish Omelet with swiss cheese, corned beef, and fried onions.  After the bad news regarding our charter we decided to head into Savannah and seek out Sorry Charlie"s Oyster house for some fresh Oysters and some locally brewed beer.  There was an Orvis Store near there where I decided to spend the money that was dedicated for the charter and by some nice fishing clothes.  Savannah is quite an interesting city, especially coming from here in Minnesota where the temperatures are in the 20's during the day and teens at night.  For us it was short sleeve weather, yet I was surprised that the morning temperatures were in the low 30's.  Even with the freezing temperatures in the morning there were palm tress and the beautiful Southern Live Oaks with significant clumps of Spainish Moss hanging from them.   Still, a heck of a lot better than having snow on the ground, even though ice fishing can't start soon enough!!!  On other experience that I thought was interesting, on the way to Tybee Island we stopped at a roadside produce stand and along with fresh vegetables they had a variety of Georgia made products.  I could not resist getting some Peach and Bourbon Barbecue Sauce for my neighbor Tim.  Spotting what looked good was a jar of Southern Pickled Brussel Sprouts.  The gal at the counter sensed I wasn't from around there, maybe the Green Bay Packer Hat was s dead giveaway, so she asked if I knew what these were and if I liked them.  Saying they looked interesting, she said ok, I'll do on better, took the jar that I go from the shelf, went in the back room and came out with a pint mason jar of pickled brussel sprouts, with some green beans and sliced red peppers and onions, no label and said here, you'll really like these.  Not asking anything I settled up while the rest of the guys bought some boiled peanuts, admittedly I would not go out of my way for those, I did eat a few!!

Little Gracie Watson

Savannah is a very historical city, in fact it has the largest area designated as a National Historic District of any city in the United States.  It was surprising to learn that it also serves as the third largest shipping port in the United States.  Savannah was an important port as it had deep water access via the Savannah River.  It was an important port for the British prior to the Revolutionary War as it served to be the main shipping point for cotton and tobacco, both products that were important to the British economy.  Georgia was in fact named after England's King George.  Savannah is known to be a haunted city with many famous areas that are associated with ghosts and spirits.  One such area is Bonaventure Cemetery on the east side of Savannah.  Located on an old plantation it was very interesting to go through this amazing 160 acres of land and see how different these are from what I am used to here up north!  Our personal tour guide Phil is very familiar with some of these interesting places in the area and he brought us to a number of unusual grave sites including that of Little Gracie Watson, an amazing story in itself.  This grave sites are fairly large, often a whole family is interned withing the boundaries of their plot.  In the case of Little Gracie, her site includes a marble carving of her story as well as this statue of her.  The story is that she was born in 1883, the only child of Mr. Watson, who was the manager of the famous Pulaski Hotel in Savannah.  Little Gracie basically had the run of the hotel and had become the admired and beloved child to many of the guests.  Two days before Easter in 1889, Gracie died of pneumonia at 6 years old.  She was buried at Bonaventure.  In 1890 a famous sculpture, John Walz moved to Savannah and Gracie's father had him carve a statue of Gracie from a photograph that he had.  The grave was so popular that the cemetery had to put a fence around it to protect it from visitors as they would rub her nose thinking it

Little Gracie's Story

would give them good luck (See the link).  Phil also explained that people often leave gifts such as toys, flowers, and other childhood items, especially at Christmas.  Phil was surprised to see that there was none at the time of our visit.  It was often said that the spirit of Gracie can be felt at her grave site, I cannot attest to that but honestly it was quite touching and a sad but beautiful story.   Other notables that reside in Bonaventure were Johnny Mercer, a very famous composer of music in the 1940's and 50's as well a number of Civil War heros.  I definitely regret not going fishing but honestly had a really fun time exploring Savannah and it's history.  I would highly recommend to put this city on your bucket list, as there is so much to see and do, plus the food is outstanding!!! Maybe one day there will be the chance to try fishing again.  Unfortunately we just got word that there will be no driving on Red this weekend, Oh well.