First Trip to Red

First Walleye, 20 inches

 Enough of the questionable ice reports, traffic jams, little fish, and cancelled trips.  My friend Andy Achman was heading back to Red Lake last weekend after a report that his friend got 45 walleyes the previous week.  My regular crew had moved to Lake Winnebigoshish and Ben Aiona, who did well on Lake of the Woods 2 weeks ago was staying home.  The traffic on Red had subsided quite a bit and I prefer to go with at least one other house for safety reasons, I called my brother Steve and friend Kevin to see if they wanted to go.  With the rain and very wet snow predicted for last Thursday and Friday we decided to leave on Saturday and come back on Tuesday.  Because Andy had Monday off he was going to leave Monday morning.  Steve and Kevin met me at the house as I was hooking up the Salem, once on the road we headed north for our 4 1/2 hour drive to JR's.  A quick call to Andy and he was about 90 minutes ahead of us.  A quick stop at Deer River for gas and bait and an hour later we were on Artesyn Spring road heading for JR's.  Andy called and said he had some troubles and just got on the ice, I said we will be there in 5 minutes.  He has the coordinates to the area where his friends did well so he waited.  Our destination was to the north of Center Bar, out 2 miles from JR's, take a left and go 6 miles then a right along the Reservation line, maybe 3 miles then to the right.  There was a fair amount of snow on the ice but it wasn't too bad as I got turned around making sure my truck was facing the plowed road for an easier exit.  With 3 seasoned guys it doesn't take long to get set up.  This was to be my first experience using my new Strikemaster 40V 10 inch auger.  It was pretty impressive as it cut about 4 times as fast as my old chisel bit 10 inch Big Volt auger.  It also has a reverse feature so once the hole is done, put it in reverse and push most of the slush back down the hole.  As I got done Steve and Kevin were letting the house down.  The next priority was to get the DirecTV set up to watch the Packer/Rams game.  I always have a little trouble the first time but by 3:40 we had the game on.  We started fishing and almost immediately Kevin's rod was bent down pretty good, he had a nice one on.  About 1/2 way up it came off.  Within a minute a big mark appeared on my screen and it hit like a runaway truck.  Telling Kevin this was a good fish he took out my transducer.  Got it's head to the top of the hole and the bait came flying out.  A quick reach into the hole and Kevin had the fish, a beautiful 20 inch walleye.  We thought....Here we go!!!  Well that ended up being the highlight of the trip as far as fish goes.  The master plan was to watch the games on Saturday, have chili in the house.  Sunday and Monday was hopefully having fish at JR's.  Kevin caught a 14 incher later Saturday evening and then we were skunked till Monday night when Steve got a 14 incher.  Therefore we never got the chance to have a fish dinner at JR's

Sundogs at it's finest

Time seems to go a lot faster when one is fishing.  Tuesday morning came fast as it was time to pack up.  It is always nice to have Steve and Kevin with as they are trained very well to do the things that need to be done to leave.  With the 3 of us we were cleaned and hooked up within a half an hour.  The biggest challenge was to make sure we could get back on the road, however the cold temperatures hardened the snow up somewhat and we pulled right out of our spot and back on the road.  With about 18 inches of ice the speed limit is about 15 mph.  Our route took us south to the curve then southeast to the main road from JR's.  The sun comes up in the southeast and the light cloud cover produced a beautiful picture of the sundogs on either side of the rising sun, I had to stop and take this picture.  Once at JR's I decided to leave my wheel house there and pick it up in a few weeks to go to the Lake of the Woods out of Springsteel Island Resort.  Ben just came back from the there and I am excited to get a report.  Although it was disappointing to get so few fish,  one can never replace the time spent with friends.  I have finished this sort of late and my friends Mark Mayerich, Adam Mayerich, and Gary Ullom are fishing on Red and I just called them.  They are not doing any better.  I'll have a better report for yesterday's trip but that will have to wait a few days, not this many however!

Fishin' With Pete

Our launch point before it was froze

 I've started this a number of times and hopefully it get's finished.  On December 26th my neighbor Pete invited me back to his families land north of Grand Rapids, MN to catch some nice sunfish and crappies.  Meeting me at 8:00 Saturday morning, it started on the wrong foot immediately.  We hooked up the trailer and the coupler never got latched.  When driving the ATV onto the trailer, the front of the trailer came off the ball and put a little dent in Pete's new truck.  It's a stupid mistake that I've seen before.  In my mind I thought Pete locked it but apparently I wasn't seeing things right.  Either way I got a quick scolding, we hooked it back up and proceeded to load up.  Pete kept his cool pretty well as there is little one could do now.  It's sort of like getting the first scratch on the boat, not a great event but life goes on regardless.  After stopping by his house and loading up his stuff we headed north.  We were in no particular hurry and had time to stop by Bruce's place, just east of Garrison, to get our coffee cups refilled.  A quick visit and we were back on the road. Our next stop was in Grand Rapids to get groceries and go to the L & M farm store to get a battery for the inside lights for my portable shelter.  It's the first time in that store and I was really impressed as it reminded me how these types of stores used to be like.  Picking up a 12V 9 AH gel cell, I also bought a Vexilar Glow Ring for charging up my UV coated baits.  About 40 minutes north of Grand Rapids we stopped at the Frontier store to pick up bait and a few fishing items.  Arriving at the cabin, Pete's brother Tim arrived earlier and fired up the stove and had done some scouting for the fish.  After getting everything unloaded without incident, we hooked everything to my ATV and pulled our shacks out to the lake through the cattails.  It was quite slushy on our first drive through but we made it.  After stopping to see Tim, Pete decided to head up the lake further off a point, around 19 feet of water.  Pete kept talking about all the nice fish so when I caught an 8 inch bluegill and showed it to him, there was little reaction so back it went.  Although I had caught 5 fish in the few hours left, there were fish there and fishing out in the open didn't help our concentration.  The fish stopped about 30 minutes after sunset so we headed in for a nice meal of Cheeseburger Soup Tim had brought.  Tomorrow we'd hit it hard!

Nice 8 to 9 1/2 inch bluegills

Sunday morning arrived and after breakfast we headed back out.  Tim decided to fish the 23 foot water while Pete and I decided to try the point again.  After seeing what size fish Tim had kept there was a better understanding of what a nice bluegill was.  Setting up my portable that hadn't been used in about 6 years, there were a couple of things needing readjustment.  One of the screws on the bracket that held the front vertical poll support had come out.  Luckily it fell on the bare ice and was easily found and using a larger ice jig was able to make it work for the day.  The other is I mistakenly shoveled all the snow from the floor of my shack making it very slippery.  I like using the newer direct drive single action reels with 3 pound colored monofilament line on a very soft tipped 24 - 30 inch rod.  The key to catching these fish is to pay close attention to your line and the feel of the tip as the fish were biting very soft, often just inhaling the bait.  Moving the tip softly up and down would allow you to feel if a fish was there without pulling it out of their mouths, a quick set and up they come.  I ended the day with 14 nice bluegills, a small crappie and a very nice tullibee, about 18 inches long.  They are really fun to catch.  Tim had some really nice crappies in his bucket, in that 11 to 13 inch range as he was in deeper water.  Another fisherman came out to his area and did pretty good using larger baits.  I thought the glow ring really helped in that deeper water as you could see the fish come up to the bait as it drifted down.  My friend Kevin is a really good at this kind of fishing so I called him but he didn't answer.  We used to do real good in Alma using Purist's, a small panfish lure with a hard plastic attached on the hook shank.  It has a perfect sink rate, slow and inviting.  I did put one on and caught quite a bite of fish with it.  Kevin and I finally got connected and we talked about the using the Purist.  I laughed as he said you are fishing how deep!  It does take a while for those baits to get down, they can be deadly.  We cleaned about 30 fish that evening.

Monday was our last day and we decided to fish the deeper water.  Although the good news was the crappies were there, I only kept 2 sunfish as many were too small.  Still good action, it's fun watching the fish on your Vexilar and trying to get them to hit.  The same guy came out in the early afternoon and set up right next to us.  He left early and I suspect the noise didn't help our late afternoon bite.  Never the less I ended up with 2 nice sunfish and 7 beautiful crappies.  No complaints.  Although I had many offers to head to Red Lake, Winnebigoshish, and maybe Lake of the Woods.  Not having fished nice crappies and bluegills for a while it was totally enjoyable.  Enough to maybe try and fish panfish a little bit more this year.  I've fixed up the portable, got my auger running and picked up a few new lures and tuned up my gear.  It looks like we might be on Red in a week, with LOTW's definitely in the target.