Lake Oahe, Days 3 and 4

 

Mark with a nice northern pike

The tropical heat of Thursday gave way to a complete switch in the wind, now coming out of the north at a pretty good clip.  Our strategy had completely switched from sorting through the walleyes to accepting the fact that 90% of our fish were going to be under 15 inches.  Liberal limits were set to help reduce this specific population as the floods of 2012 washed a significant amount of bait fish out of the lake, leaving the predator to prey ratio way out of proportion.  It would be nice if the Minnesota DNR was so diligent!   With 2 days behind us we had some catching up to do and decided to again head down river to fish our new spot, Nodding Horse Bay and continue into the main portion of the river.  Although we didn't get much action in the bay, the mouth and areas to the south came alive.  One of the nicer catches was Mark's northern which went about 36 inches.  It's interesting fishing the river as you never know what's at the end of your line and this fish surprised us.  Maintaining a controlled drift with the wind the action was steady.  Slowly the live well began to fill up with fish, enough that I started the front live well to keep the fish as fresh as possible.  Our drift consisted of moving up and down a deeper edge, staying in the 22 - 28 feet range and moving around a point, maybe about a quarter mile of water to fish.  Mark noticed a fish had followed his bait up then decided to stay under the boat.  It was a nice smallmouth bass, one that was smart enough not to fall prey to our jigs.  Mark threw a leech within a few feet and it just inhaled it.  Smallies are excellent table fare and it joined the already growing cache of fish destined for the cleaning table.

A Success Day's Catch

 By 4:00 we were counting and double counting our fish, making sure we did not go over our boat limit of 24 walleyes plus our bonus fish.  An impressive catch for the day, we did have some nice walleyes but the majority were under 13 inches, they would still make a great meal.  As you see in the picture, the South Dakota Parks Department provide a very nice cleaning station at the boat landing area.  Complete with water, Teflon cleaning surfaces, and a huge fish grinder, its a perfect place to clean and dispose of what's left of your fish.  Heading back to the house we were staying in, it was time to vacuum pack the fish and get them in the freezer.  South Dakota does not require one to leave any skin on the fish for transport.  Their only stipulation is that a piece of filet counts as 1/2 a fish.  Cut a large filet in half and it counts as 1 fish.  Because the average fillet was small we put 4 in a bag and sealed it flat so they could be counted.  In the end this pretty good as the fish froze perfectly and would not require any further processing when we got home. Now that we had everything figured out, the last day should be a breeze.

25 inch walleye, best of the trip

On Saturday we woke up to a cool 55 degrees and an east wind blowing into a distant thunderstorm. Because our spot had been successful we decided to return to the area we learned was called Slide Hill.  Almost immediately we began to catch fish.  On Friday we depended entirely on the live wells to keep our fish fresh, this time we bought a bunch of ice to ice them down if the fish turned belly up.  It was a great idea.  Up to this point the largest walleye we caught was 23 inches, a few in the 18 inch range and the rest under 15.  I was jigging my 3/8 ounce VMC Neon Moon Eye (NME) with a Powerbait paddletail tipped with a half a crawler when something smashed my lure.  The fish hung to the bottom, shaking it's head just like a large catfish, it didn't want to come up.  Convinced it was Mr. Whiskers, there was no need to hurry with the net as catfish usually hook themselves pretty good in their fleshy mouth and require surgical techniques to remove.  A few minutes later I could pick out a light colored shape, yep, must be a catfish.   Just as it surfaced the white tip of the tail became evident and we landed the largest walleye of the trip, a fat 25 incher.  These fish remind me of lake trout as when you clean them the cavity has literally rolls of fat inside them.  It was a great addition to a pretty good week and a nice reward for the last day of some serious and hard fishing.  Again we ended the day with our limit of walleyes as we headed back to the landing to clean our catch.  Sunday we packed up and by 7:00 we were on our way.  Some final thoughts: Night crawlers worked as good as anything and offered the greatest variety of fish caught; The water is very hard as it has taken 3 days to get the white film off my boat; My jigging skills have improved significantly with back to back Canada and Lake Oahe trips; It's great to be with the people you care about.   I have a feeling this won't be my last trip to this fabulous fishery.


A sign from Eric

In the meantime I did get my tractor put back together, began to weed my infested garden, picked the last of my raspberries, and headed to Eleva for our annual Fagerland Family Reunion at Jim and Kristy's on Saturday.  An extra special surprise was seeing my great Aunt Florence Olson, sitting in a chair looking as good as ever.  She is 101 1/2 years old and I must have talked to her for over an hour.  My Dad's favorite aunt, he made her adopt him after his mother (Florence's sister) died back in 2002.  Amazing articulate, we talked about everything including her hearing, loss of sight, and memory things that I have started to experience!  I guess I have a long way to go to catch her.  We did stop at Blueberry Ridge and picked 4 ice cream buckets of blueberries which I am enjoying every night.  Feeling somewhat lazy I decided to give my friend Bill Lundeen some berries and drove my motorcycle to Mille Lacs on Sunday.  Returning home my neighbor Lory was picking choke cherries for wine so I grabbed my ladder and helped.  We picked about 17 pounds.  Wednesday evening I head up to Mille Lacs with my good friend Chuck Teasley, he joins me every year about this time.  Although the fish bite has slowed down, it will be a great day as always.  I will leave you with a pretty cool experience.  While trying to catch a fish on the third day at Lake Oahe, we had not even come close to filing our limits.  As we arrived at our fishing spot on Friday a dragonfly landed on Mark's sleeve.  His son Eric, who past away 12 years ago as a teenager often shows his presence in the form of a dragonfly.  I tried to get a picture on his sleeve but apparently it wasn't talking to me!  Giving Mark the camera, the dragonfly flew down and landed on the boat, just next to him, allowing it's picture to be taken.  Our success immediately changed as we took full advantage of the sign given to us.  All I can say is it worked.

Not Much Happening

Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock.............so much to do, so little time!  The sad part is that with my work schedule and this great weather, I still haven't had time to get the boat out.  Fishing reports on the Rainy River has been nothing more than fabulous and somehow fitting it in seems impossible.  So I'm relegated to yard work, cleaning the garage, putting the ice fishing stuff away, and getting the boat ready.  One thing that I have completely ignored is my asparagus plants in the garden.  Usually I am cleaning up the beds around the middle of April, hoping for the soil to warm up and encourage those tender green sprouts to show themselves.  I have about 100 or so plants in my garden and on a good May/June day can pick 2 to 3 pounds of succulent spears.  My usual routine is to leave the tops on the plants through the winter giving it some protection from the elements.  In the spring I prepare the beds by raking the dead stuff and burning what's left to create nice clean rows.  If lucky I can usually accumulate about 10 pounds to bring up to fishing opener on Leech, with some years not having anything.  Well with everything greening up like it's May I looked out the window and thought to myself, man I had better get out there before those shoots start popping up as it's a lot easier when I am not digging up good ones.  With Saturday slated to be in the 70's, it'll be a great day for it.  On the other hand, if the asparagus is up, I might just have to cook up some.  Either way this early spring has got me in a rush.  Just an FYI, one of my favorite ways to cook asparagus had been to either microwave it or cook it in a special steamer made for the job.  Today I simply brush some olive oil on the spears and throw them on the grill, need I say more.

So, what about fishing, it is Fishin With Dave ya know!  Well things are moving along in that department.  I am pleased to report that Mille Lacs Lake official ice out was Monday, March 26th.  This smokes the previous old record for the earliest ice out of April 3.  As a reference, last years official date was May 1 and the average is around April 26th.  Leech Lake has reportedly lost it's ice cover yesterday, March 28th.  With nice weather scheduled we can look forward to an early walleye spawn with the fish being on the bite by time Minnesota fishing opener begins.  Man, it's awfully early.  I am even hearing reports that there are boats out on the main lake at Lake of the Woods.  We should still be ice fishing!  With opener 6 weeks away, the big females will be deeper than normal but should be more aggressive.  I did buy a new fishing reel a few weeks ago.  During the 2010 golf tourney I bid and got an Ardent C400 casting reel and at $115 it was a steal.  Looking to replace a worn out reel I checked them out on the website and they had a closeout on the reel in a Fishouflage Walleye color, $75.00.  I ended up getting 3 of them, one each for Adam and Mark Mayerich as well one for myself.  These are first class reels, made in the USA, and work exceptionally well.  I have my Ranger almost ready to go and just have a few more tweaks before she takes her maiden run for 2012.

Finally on Sunday we went to celebrate my great aunt Florence's 100th birthday at the Strum Lutheran Church.  Just like Garrison Keillor would describe, it was held in the church basement like all good Lutheran events.  Florence is quite amazing and at 100 still retains that Fagerland edge to her.  I asked her if she was coming to my 100th birthday and she gave me a resounding YES.  Quite articulate, we had a great discussion and I can only hope that I age as well as she has.  At 100 a person has lived an interesting life.  She witnessed WW1 as a child and lived through the depression, and WW2.  She saw technology change right in front of her as there were no phones, no radio, no TV, cars were a luxury to today when we take all of this for granted.  She's certainly seen more than most, Happy Birthday Sweetheart!!!