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!