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!