Fishin' With Mark

Large crawfish Mark caught

 My good friend Mark Applen had decided to base his wheel house out of Denny's Resort on Lake Winnebigoshish, about 3 1/2 hours north of home as he lives less than a mile from me.  He was heading up last weekend and asked if I would like to join him.  Lake Winnie was the first lake that Mark introduced me to wheel house fishing when we took his older wheel house and met his friends the Praught Brothers on the lake for a weekend of fishing.  I instantly fell in love and within a year there was a Salem parked by my shed.   Winnebigoshish was part of a number of lakes in northern Minnesota that were created in the lat 1800's to serve as water storage for the Mississippi River for the summer.  Pokegama Lake, Winnebigoshish and Leech all are part of the Mississippi River watershed and are quite large lakes.  Because Mark's house was already there we simply drove my truck up to the resort, hooked up his Salem and we pulled it out on the lake.  The structure of the lake is quite interesting as the main road out from the resort basically followed a miles long edge topping out at about 12 feet then dropping to 30 in about 100 - 20 feet.  It was pretty interesting a the houses were parked along the drop off, almost in single file.  After about a 6 mile drive we were close to the end of the road and decided to pull off to the left as there was a larger space in between houses.  The trip off the plowed road started out okay but as we headed towards our destination, the snow got deeper and it was what I call sugar snow, did not pack down well and made it hard to get any traction.  That's another story!  We had the house in an ok spot along the drop but really didn't know how deep we were.  Because we were basically stuck, this would have to do.  Drilling the holes we were in about 18 feet of water, on the drop.  Because both Mark and I have the same wheel house it is pretty fast as we both work in unison and we were ready to fish in record time, set up by 3:00 PM, just in time for the evening bite.  And bite it was, as fish appeared on the screen immediately and within a few minutes a hit.  Quickly an 8 inch walleye came through the hole.  We caught many walleyes of that size as we had a self imposed limit of 13.5 inches minimum.  The lake is quite clear so Mark put down his camera and connected it to the TV.  We saw a nice northern pike swim by explaining why the bite had stopped.  There was a huge crawfish sitting just on the bottom below Mark's minnow.  He lowered the bait and it grabbed onto the minnow, he hauled it up.  The are actually a beautiful creature with bright orange with a vibrant blue claws, the picture doesn't do it justice.  Mid day tends to be slower than the morning and evening bite.

Nice pile of Walleye and Perch Fillets

Bringing my new K-drill  auger with, now that I had the right sized drill, mid afternoon on Saturday was a perfect time to try it out.  The fish house was on a north south line so east it would be shallower and west it would get deeper.  Drilling 4 holes each way I went deep and Mark went shallow.  We each did well as I nailed the largest walleye of the weekend, a 14.5 inch fish while Mark hammered the perch. It was cold out but trying something different was fun as we both saw constant action.  Finally the action cooled off and we decided to head back into the warmth of the house to finish up the weekend.  As the sun set the walleye bite picked up again and we caught quite a few, granted they were small but it's still fun to watch them come up on the depthfinder and match your skills based on what you see on the screen.  It was interesting that neither over nights produced a rattle wheel hit, or maybe we just slept through it.  Sunday morning it was time to leave.  Mark's friend Scott had came out to fish by us earlier and had parked on the path that I had made prior to shutting the truck off in order to have a clear path out.  It really didn't matter because I got stuck immediately.  Mark had commented that it almost felt like my traction control was off.  Below the radio is a set of buttons that control these things and each had a light to designate if they were on or not, at least that's what I was lead to believe.  Yet being stuck, the RPM's were 1500 yet no wheels were spinning, prompted a closer look.  Sure enough when the traction control button was pressed a light in the dash by the speedometer had the traction control icon off.  With the traction control off the truck walked right out off our spot.  Making a few loops to make sure we got out okay we hooked up the house and drove right out.  Interesting as I've never had that problem before but it's possible that I wasn't paying attention.  I am getting old you know!

Eelpout, no respect!

Back on the road it was pretty rough so we headed slowly at 5 mph.  Rough ice can cause a lot of problems in a wheel house, scattering things inside as well it's hard on everything.  Finally getting back to the resort, I took the fish to the cleaning house while Mark parked and unhooked his house, as he has kept it there all winter.  Denny's has a nice cleaning house, heated with water, perfect.  No one was in it and when I arrived there was a nice eelpout laying there, apparently someone caught it but decided to leave it for someone.  Nobody had to hit me in the  head as they are excellent eating.  Ugly but taste great.  Almost done cleaning fish, Mark came in and did the honors while I finished the walleyes and perch.  We ended up with 4 small walleyes, about 12 decent perch and a gift from someone who doesn't understand what they left.  Oh well, we got cleaned up and headed south, stopping at the Y in Garrison for something to eat.  It was a lot of fun to get back to Winnie and fish.  It is really supposed to get cold this weekend, -35 up north.  At this time the plan is to head to Red Lake and pick up my wheel house then haul it to Springsteel Island Resort, north of Warroad, MN on the southwest side of Lake of the Woods.  the plan is to leave it there for a month and try our luck there.