Signs of Spring

Galloway Park on the Mississippi River

Well, after a pretty hard winter, the month of March has brought what it normally does, warmer weather and snow melt.  This year saw an snowpack on the ground that was equivalent to the spring prior to the devastating floods of 1965.  There were some concerning flooding predictions this year as the first part of March saw a fairly rapid snow melt along with some local heavy rains.  Things settled down a bit with drier weather and freezing temperatures at night, it really slowed down the runoff.  The rivers have crested slightly above their flood stages and even though there are areas of concern, for the most part things are looking good as the rivers are starting to recede.   Behind the house the Mississippi has peaked and is going down.  Every 10 years or so it overflows into the neighbors pasture and into Galloway Park, just on the border of Champlin and Dayton, MN.  Stopping by this morning to snap this picture, although the water is still running across the road, if the projected rains forecasted for this weekend stay on the light side, it should still be headed back to normal.  With Temperatures scheduled to be in the 60's and  the below normal amount of ice on the lakes this year, ice out should be pretty much normal this year, no one was talking about this at the end of February, the predictions were a late ice out.  It is amazing how fast things can change this time of year as it looks like our Team Walleye 46th Annual Minnesota Fishing Opener will be just perfect.  Mark Mayerich has been working especially hard on this as we have lot's of things to do, organize the meals, bait, signs, new hats, it's not that easy, but it'll get done!

Picture Perfect Fish

A dream trip of mine is to try and schedule a trip to fish the Port Clinton Ohio area of Lake Erie in early April.  My friends Kevin and Ben Aiona headed there last Sunday as I was supposed to drop off some lures for him.  Unfortunately I never made it which was OK anyway, they had left by noon and when I did call them they were in Chicago already.  Ben has an 18 foot Ranger 618T with a 90 hp Mercury Tiller.  Maybe somewhat of a small boat but they managed.  On Monday night Ben sent me a picture of this beautiful and fat 27 inch walleye.  I sent this to my friends and we all agreed that the measuring stick they used must be wrong as that looks bigger than 27.  Apparently they got there, figured out a system however it took them almost all day to find clear water and when they did, they were able to catch 4 nice walleyes.  According to Ben the walleyes were in 40 feet of water suspended up around 20 feet deep.  Using well known trolling apps and line counter reels one can easily calculate how much line one needs out, at what speed to make a certain bait run in the strike zone of 20 feet.  His report yesterday was a little better as Kevin tested this at about the same time they caught the big on pictured at 4:00:  We are at 34 so far today.  All on Bandits, 75 to 100 feet back, 1.0 - 1.7 mph.  I would say 24 is our biggest and 20 is the smallest in the box.  It was a better bite his morning.  He sent me another picture and it looks like it was a little more rougher seas, as well the fish was smaller...maybe something for next week.

Walleye caught by the Wolf River Cam, Shiocton 2 Site

One of the things that is going are the Wolf River Camera's, underwater camera's on the Wolf River, northwest of Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin.  The cameras record the fish migration up the river to spawn and although many of the fish are suckers, there are quite a few walleyes and there was even a sturgeon that swam by today.  To the left is a screen shot of a nice walleye swimming by.  There has been some larger females however for the most part the majority of the walleyes have been the smaller males.  It's cool looking at these as one never knows what will swim by.  As well they often travel in small groups so if one swims by, chances are a couple more will follow.  The have 5 different areas along the river however it seems as though only Shiocton 1, Shiocton 2, and New London are operating.  Someone put a sinker in front of the New London camera as well I think the Shiocton 1 and 2 cameras are more active these days.  As the water gets warmer, more toward next week the migration will definitely pick up.  Maybe you will get to see that massive sturgeon swim by!