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.