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!