Back on the Pond



Kevin and a nice walleye



After 4 days of fishing in Canada the next date was with my neighbor Blair Wolfram and his friend Kevin from Chicago.  Last year Blair had asked me if I could take his friend fishing, we were able to get out in the middle of June, and did very well.  This trip was a couple of weeks later however with the late spring, timing was perfect.  My friend Mark Applen was staying at his place on Mille Lacs and had started giving me early morning reports as he was out on a mid-lake flat.  Words like "Committing Suicide, On Fire, Jumping in the Boat" made us wish we would have left 2 hours earlier.  The last draw was a picture that came on the phone of a 44 inch northern he just released.....uffda!  Stopping at Lundeen's to pick up some supplies and the secret bait (shhhh...small pike sucker minnows) we headed to the landing.  Based on the past spotty reports of little pressure on the lake I expected the landing to have plenty of parking yet as we turned the corner you could see rigs parked in the ditch, a sure sign the bit was good.  All the rain has certainly filled up the lake, evident by the dock at the landing requiring a good jump or wet feet to get in the boat.  I generally have a strategy of stops, starting inshore first then working our way to the middle of the lake.  With Mark's reports still coming in we decided to just meet him at 7 mile.  As we approached the flat he was easily identified by the guy standing in his boat waving us over!  There was a nice chop on the lake and as we got closer he was reeling up another fish.  There were quite a few boats on the flat and with 3 guys I decided to circle the outside edge.  An hour later we had 5 walleyes on the board.  Finishing our first trip around the flat back to Mark, he was ready to leave.  With both his keepers in the boat, the wind was dying and bite slowed, he left for his place at Fisherman's Wharf. 



 Caught on a crawler



Another hour at that flat and a few more fish we decided to look for a less crowded flat.  With so many guys on a structure, they can push the active fish off the flats.  The calming winds causes the water to flatten out, add the high sun and you can be assured the light penetration is at it's maximum.  Once this happened the walleye's became more scarce although they didn't stop biting, it was just longer between fish.  Deciding to go back to my original strategy we headed back closer to shore and fished Sherman's Flat.  We had little competition as there were only 3 boats left verses the 12 that were working it as we passed it earlier.  No jumping in the boat we managed another 6 walleyes for a total of 13 caught.  Moving north to Seguchi Flat's long western edge, another 5 walleyes were netted.  A final stop back at Sherman's saw an additional 2 fish for a days total of 20.  Not saying it was a bad day but once the wind stopped blowing it became more difficult to locate active fish.   Had we been there 2 hours earlier, it could have been double that.  Oh well the price for a decent nights sleep.  We did not end up with any keeper fish, those in the tight 18 - 20 inch slot range yet we did get a surprising 17 incher.  I suppose you could look at the good side, at least we didn't have to clean fish when we got home!  With the bite as good as it is my next trip planned is Friday the 5th with a good friend Hondro Zeller.  The last time he fished with me was when I had my Skeeter 135T, probably in the mid 1990's.  I don't remember if we caught any fish but I do recall how windy and rough it was.  We hit a wave and my rear trolling motor bracket broke sending the entire unit into the water as I only became aware of it as the motor, held on by the cord, was bouncing off the back!  Going too fast and acting too smart, thank God I am older now.  This trip will be a little more civilized as the Ranger handles the water much better and the weather is supposed to be beautiful.  Hopefully next weeks post will be a good one.

Monday we met regarding our Lake Oahe trip and have that pretty well organized.  Russ wants to leave at 4:00 in the morning, go go go.  Draining my livewells on Sunday the valve control for one of them broke.  On top of that there must have been some water left in the system as one of the valves by the aerator pump was leaking pretty bad, typical of what happens when water freezes and cracks the case.  I did get to my dealer to secure parts and will put them in before Friday.   

Wind and Walleyes

Sunday's forecast for Mille Lacs was steady winds at 20 mph with gusts over 30, severe storms developing in the late afternoon.  Assuming the weatherman was right, my neighbor Blair Wolfram, his friend Kevin Keehn from Chicago, and I left for the lake at 6:00 in the morning.  Blair did me a big favor a few weeks ago by taking an old shed of mine, but as I stated in an earlier post that's another story.  During the move he wanted to know if I would be willing to hire out as a guide and take them to Mille Lacs sometime as Kevin was interested in catching a few walleyes.  With the bite being what it is I predicted a successful trip, a prediction that wasn't too hard to make.  The crawler bite has been on fire and with little rain, the garden has not produced much in the way of bait.  A stop at Lundeen's to load up, 6 dozen crawlers plus what I had of my own would hopefully be enough.  Driving up the south side of the lake on Hwy 169 Blair commented on how calm the water seemed.  With the wind blowing straight out of the south I assured them that the current perception will change quickly!  The landing surprisingly had parking spaces left, a sure sign that the wind blew some of the fisherman away.  Once launched our first stop was an inshore deep rock pile off of Sherman's Point to see if there were any fish hanging around.  The HDS10 sonar unit really marks fish well and I have gotten to the point of only fishing structure where I see fish.  With nothing showing up on the graph and a tip that 7 Mile Flat was hot, we headed east.  Once out of the bay the wind showed it tenacity to create rollers and whitecaps.  When the wind gets blowing hard it can be difficult as the splash from the boat cutting the water often gets blown right into the boat and into my face.  The goal of driving 4 miles out to 7 Mile was quickly changed to looking at Sherman's Flat first.  Arriving at the edge we slowed down and scanned the structure.  There were about 10 boats working the area, some drifting across the top of the flat while a few were working the edge.  Those on the edge were catching fish as we saw at least 3 fish landed before we even got our lines in the water.  With the waves peaking around 3-4  feet I decided to tie on 3 way rigs using a 2 foot dropper line/1 ounce bell sinker and my hand tied 8 foot crawler rigs featuring Tru-Turn hooks for a more positive hook set.  The heavier weights would keep the lines closer to the boat to avoid tangles as well as keeping the bait in the strike zone more consistently.  The Tru-Turn hooks for the most part do not require one to give the fish much line once a bite is felt and if you simply put the rod in the rod holder 9 out of 10 times a fish will hook itself.  The real advantage is that almost all of the hooks are in the upper jaw area causing little damage giving the fish an excellent chance for release survival.  Once a fish swallows a hook all bets are off.  We immediately started catching walleyes as the graph showed them stacked right on the edge and if you marked fish you caught fish.  By 2:00 we had 21 fish on the counter with at least another 10 that had got loose half way to the boat.  The top picture is Kevin with a nice walleye and the next is Blair with a dandy 27 incher.  It was interesting to see all of the blood suckers on the fish as the walleye Blair is holding as it has quite a few attached to the bottom jaw area.

With the bite slowing somewhat we headed to 7 Mile Flat checking out what was happening there.  It was a wet ride for me, thank God the temperature was in the 80's!  As we did on Sherman's, I found the east edge of the flat and using my trolling motor, we could easily stay in the sweet spot while the wind blew us up the flat.  As with Sherman's we immediately started marking fish on the edge.  An hour later we had another 12 fish landed including a triple on the first pass.  There was only 1 other boat on the Flat, a testimony to how rough it was.  As predicted my Sirius Weather module started beeping, warning us of the pending weather warnings issued for the area.  My HDS will overlay the radar signals onto the GPS portion of my readout making it easy to track what the storm was doing and although it was still in the distance, it didn't look good.  Deciding to get closer to the landing we went back to Sherman's Flat and caught another 3 fish before heading in.  My largest for the day was this 27 inch fish.  Our total for the day was 36 fish netted, 5 slot fish for the frying pan, and another 12 - 15 fish hooked but not landed.  Other than Blair having to readjust his concentration on the horizon, we had a great time with most of the fish measuring between the 21 - 27 inch range.  We never gut hooked one fish which might explain why we lost a number of them but who's complaining.  Looking at the time we got on the lake, time not fishing, and total fish hooked, we were getting a fish every 8 minutes.  It sure kept me busy.  I know that Blair and Kevin had a great time as fishing doesn't get a whole lot better than this!  We ended the day with a stop at a local watering hole for a burger and a cold beer before heading home.  All I know is that it took at least and hour before I got rid of my sea legs. 

This Friday is the ENA Memorial Golf Tournament which I am the official photographer.  Besides helping to raise money and take pictures, it give me a chance to do something nice for a very worthy cause.  Rain is predicted for Saturday so I am hoping to get back to the lake on Sunday.  Next weekend I have committed to help my friend Bill as a guide for a big corporate event he hosts each year.  I have done this in the past and it can be rewarding to help someone who's never caught a walleye land a trophy.  If the bite continues as it has, it shouldn't be too difficult.