About Time!!!

Our ice Freezer

So, my good friend Kevin sent me an e-mail asking me about my blog and what the heck I was up to.  Admittedly it seems as though the events of the last 3 weeks have taken a lot of wind out of my sails.  With the boat still in the shop getting the bottom repaired, at least it won't be like last year yet it will still be 3 weeks (by next Friday) that I will get it back.  It is sort of unnerving having to deal with this again, both from the damage, loss of the use of the boat, and what consequences will happen with my insurance.  Luckily the insurance premium was set for 2020/2021 so I will be good for a year as I have already paid it!!!  This is always a busy time of the year and it has not been without it's issues.  Honestly I should be writing about my last trip for the Canadian Opener on Lac Seul but both that and our June trip were cancelled because it was deemed a non-essential trip......For Who???  I understand their concern as they do have limited health care in Sioux Lookout and of course there is little one can do about the situation.  Last week was my dear friend's Tim Kuntz's auction that his wife had to help get sell  quite a bit of inventory after his unfortunate death.  Volunteering to help during the inspection and the pickup's as it was an online auction and it went pretty well, except for Tim's new Ram 3/4 ton pickup.  The reserve had been met however it appeared as though the bidders forgot to mention it to their wive's and both backed out at the last minute with a few lame excuses.  The auction house, Auction Master's were great and they helped Connie with dealing with helping to make it right, which they did.  While helping out it gave me an opportunity to get our ice machine running.  Years ago I was fishing with a friend and neighbor Roger Weber with his friends in Akaska, South Dakota.  It was very nice as one of his friends had a commercial Ice Machine in his pole shed, all the ice one ever wanted.  It was nice and when Tim Kuntz moved into the neighborhood, I casually mentioned having experienced the convenience of having your own ice machine that

8 pound bag of fantastic ice

would be nice to have our own ice machine.  A couple of years later he came up and asked if I was serious.  Of course I was, and apparently after starting his landscape curbing business he was buying 4 - 5 bags of ice a day, spending between $40 and $50 a week, he asked if I was interested in going half with him.  We ended up getting a a commercial machine and he had a small chest freezer to store it in.  Eventually the freezer stopped working , probably wasn't made to be put outside, so we ended up buying a commercial Ice Freezer from a friend, with the compressor on the top for outside usage.  Remembering when we first plugged it in it only got to 20 degrees F, and we assumed a freezer should be around 0 degrees F.  As it would have it, I went fishing with my brother to Canada with the guy that had a company that these ice freezers were part of his business.  When asked about the temperature only going down to 20 degrees F he said, yes they are designed that way.  Any colder then the ice starts to evaporate and a 5 pound bag of ice becomes 4.5 pounds and the cubes are smaller.  20 degrees F assures that one gets what one pays for!   A great example of....you learn something new every day! Tim provided the space, we owned the equipment together, I bought a bunch of ice bags, and we were in business.  Eventually our old ice maker stopped working so we got a newer Manitowoc 140, it makes great ice.  Every year the machine needs to be cleaned chemically with a natural Citric Acid cleaner to remove any scale from the main ice grid, so I did this on Thursday while helping with the auction.  Bagging in the morning and in the evening, I can bag between 8 and 10 8 pound bags of ice per day and have the freezer half full.  It will hold about 100 bags of ice, when it get's full we'll turn off he machine and use the ice through the summer. It's a pretty good system and unfortunately with Tim gone, the freezer won't empty so fast yet it is good to run and turn over so the neighbors have been told that if they need any ice!!!

Northern Catalpa tree starting to leaf out

The garden is fully planted with sweet corn, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, dill, cucumbers, squash and  variety of flowers to add some color.  These days my main goal is to make pickles, salsa, frozen corn, as well the asparagus is late but doing very well.  The first of May started a little dry but it quickly greening up.  One of the last trees to leaf out is the Northern Catalpa tree.  These are pretty cool trees as my friend Kevin had one in his yard when we were kids in Eleva.  They have very large leaves and pods that hang through spring.  I have 2 and in a few weeks they will sport the big beautiful flowers adding a little sense of a southern location here in Minnesota.  We are going to try and freeze some rhubarb this week as it seems pretty easy.  Basically you wash the stems, cut off the leaf, cut them in cubes and freeze them on a tray.  Using my commercial type vacuum packer, will vacuum seal them for the freezer.  It works excellent for sweetcorn, hopefully I can find some gluten free recipes for anything rhubarb as it is very good.  Not so good of news is our wonderful friend Craig Beigert passed away the other night.  Craig has lived with Multiple Myeloma for years but did pretty well.  He had the opportunity to fish with his friend Pete Sipe and myself at Lac Seul one year, it was alot of fun.  We ended up fishing on the corner north of camp, we had caught over 100 walleyes that day, mostly off the point on that corner.  We have since named that excellent spot to fish, Craig's Corner, let him know that his hotspot was named and we were looking forward to his return.  He was a great guy, is

Jared with a very nice sauger!

sad but as one get's older you experience more of this unfortunate stuff.  The other thing that has me miffed is I was kicked off Walleye Central, a fishing forum that I've been a part of for 21 years.  No specific reason and the notice says reinstatement: never.  Looking back at my last post it had a picture of the bottom damage to my boat and the post didn't appear to be offensive.  the moderator remove the picture and kicked me off,  oh well, I have asked for an explanation but nothing yet.  So I will end with my new found fishing buddy, Jared!  Although I have known him since he was born as his Grandpa Kevin is my best friend from home, it's been interesting to keep track of him, something his dad, Ben does a lot by sending me his pictures.  I have been invited to join them but it seems there is always something that gets in the way!  Anyway last weekend Ben was trolling Lake Pepin near Pepin Wisconsin.  His side scan wasn't working at Leech so we stopped at Bill Lundeen's who had a transducer for Ben to try.  After mounting it, they went down and launched at the Pepin Harbor, he called saying....I can see the rocks!  Obviously it was working.  We are working out a few other issues but he sent this picture of Jared holding a very nice sauger.  You can see they are trolling the rock shoreline next to the railroad tracks that run on either side of the lake.   I have always wanted to do this as the end of May and first of June is an excellent time to try this technique.  Well, I am not sure if I am totally caught up but if not there is always next week.  Thanks for the patience!

Lac Seul Part 2

Nice walleye

Finally getting caught up on the time and the big plus is having something to write about, this weeks post finishes the report on last weeks trip to Lac Seul with Bruce.  Believe it or not I did get some nice walleyes yet my attempt to try and fish similar structures that we fished during the last trip to Fisherman's Cove did not work out very well.  With only 3 days to fish and the anxiety of trying to fish where you know there are fish.........doesn't make for a very good formula for going out simply to explore!  In other words, it's almost impossible to leave biting walleyes no matter what the size.  Coming into camp I marked a few mid lake humps, not too far from camp yet we never made it to them. Fishing the west side last month the mid lake humps were loaded with nice walleyes, and I would say that the average was quite a bit larger than we find at camp.  In August about 75% of the fish we caught were over 22 inches but I would say that our average around Chamberlain Narrows is around 75% of the fish under 16 inches.  Generally the numbers make up for the size and numbers we get.  It rained quite a bit on Wednesday, our first day fishing yet we got on a point that was super productive and our total for the day was about 68 walleyes.  Thursday we went to Tuk Bay, my all time favorite spot and the bit was quite a bit slower.  Of course the rain had moved on and high pressure, bluebird skies greeted us as we anchored on Dan's point and started catching fish.  As the day wore on the bite diminished to the point where we could catch a walleye to save our butts.  Moving up the channel our first stop was a point I had discovered a year ago and we did very well on it last June.  I have it marked with a waypoint called Dave's Luck Would Have It Point!  The first thing I look for when fishing an area is whether or not the fish finders are marking any fish.  If the walleye's are there, the will show up on the sonar clear as a bell.  We were marking fish like crazy and admittedly it was as many fish as I have seen yet they were not in the mood to attack our minnow presentations.  We tried all sorts of things, different colors, different jig sizes and weights, big minnows, small minnows, plastic........you name it we threw it at the walleyes but it was a fruitless time in the old Ranger as nothing worked.  Oh well at least we were still in Canada.

Huge sauger that I caught!

Friday turned out to be on of the best days experienced on Lac Seul.  Ken had commented that we should try large minnows in the 40 feet of water in front of the cabin as the big females are moving into the deeper areas to feed on cisco's.  Luckily I had bought 3 dozen large minnows at the bait shop, consisting of large rainbow shiners and some big sucker minnows.  Dropping in 40 feet, it took a while for the 1/4 oz jig to reach the bottom but it got there.  The Lowrance has a glassed in transducer which essentially gives you readings that are about 1/3 the diameter of the depth of the water.  In 40 feet we could see about a 14 foot circle of whatever is on the bottom and it was easy to spot my jig and minnow on the screen. Unfortunately we didn't mark any fish and finally both Craig and I caught something each, two 15.5" walleyes.  Uffda, although Craigs went back down just fine, mine wasn't so fortunate as it's swim bladder was extended and it would probably end up as eagle food later.  After retrieving it we put it into the fish bag, the first of 12 walleyes we needed to take home our limits. We headed north to the unnamed point just as you turn west from Chamberlain Narrows, about a mile from camp.  There we set the anchor on the trolling motor and the action began almost immediately.  It was about 10:00 in the morning and by 11:00 we had around 30 walleyes.  We were pulling in doubles and the occasional triple but the walleyes kept coming.  Craig was pulling them in left and right and although the action slowed, changing the XM radio channel from Fox to Willy's Roadhouse made a significant difference as the bite took off again.  We had about 70 walleyes on the counter/clicker when Bruce showed up and their report was not that good.  Although the bite did slow up somewhat towards the end, it picked up about 3:00 and by Cocktail Hour (4:00PM) we had 103 walleyes on the counter, quite a day considering we hadn't left and area no more than 50 feet by 100 feet, all day.  I did catch a pretty small sauger as pictured, about 6 inches.  It is amazing the size of minnows a small fish like this will attack.  Never the less it counts as a fish caught!

Pete Caught a Number of Nice Walleyes like this

Four O'clock marked the end of our last day in camp, it's always a sad time to go but it's about the right amount of time.  The last day of fishing means Steak night as we use this day to equalize our 4 fish limit we each bring home to enjoy later.  This year we had boneless tenderloins marinated in Tabasco sauce, Frank's Hot Buffalo Wing Sauce, and Hot Picante Salsa.  2 hours of soaking in that mixture does wonders for the flavor!  While the steaks marinated I cleaned the 19 fish that filled out the limits we needed to stay legal.  Volunteering to be the fish cleaning guy, I happily do this every night.  We put the steaks on the grill and 2 bottles of wine later it was done, off to bed to get up early and clear camp.  It was a blast having Craig Biegert with this trip.  I understand that he had Chemo this Thursday however according to my friends he could not stop talking about the great time he had and all the fish he caught, especially on the last day.  I would have him in my boat any day.  One interesting observation, both Pete and I helped Craig bait his jig and also helped him remove and release any fish.  One time I was putting his minnow back on his jig when I noticed something very unusual.  We generally put the hook through the minnow's mouth, out through the gill plate, then rotate the jig and insert the hook tip through the back.  This keeps the minnow securely hooked to the jig and prevents losing a lot of minnows if the fish just grabs it.  Grabbing his jig to resecure the minnow I noticed that he had it what I would call.....assbackwards!  Generally I hold the minnow with my left hand using my right to thread it through the right side of the minnow.  He had it through the left side of the minnow.  What the heck, this seemed strange until it dawned on me, Pete is left handed and probably hooks his minnows the opposite I do, holds the minnow in his left hand.  It gave me another reason to make a stink about something admittedly I had to laugh at myself! As you see in the picture the backwards minnow method is effective as Pete did get a number of fish in the 25 inch class.

The fish house is basically put back together again as I have to admit that the Salem Ice Cabin looks pretty nice.  There are still some new plastic plugs to be inserted in the frame, a good job for this weekend. The Rangertrail Trailer has to get brought to Nick and get the step welded and braced up as I missed my steps when getting in and out of the boat.  I might get to go back up to Lac Seul to help Bruce close the cabin however it's a matter of timing as next week I am in Chicago.  Hopefully the annual trout fishing expedition with Bill can still take place this month.  Deer hunting is only 4 weeks away as time continues to fly at a record pace!

Finally, Back Fishing! Lac Seul Part 1.

Craig with a nice walleye.

Admittedly this is an interesting year for me and my fishing.  Normally I try to make it out once a week, starting with 3 days on Leech Lake, taking advantage of the hot bite on Mille Lacs in June, first part of July, fishing the Mississippi River in August, then switching to the evening shad rap bite on the reefs at Mille Lacs.  Well all that has changed this year.  Normally there is 21 - 22 weeks of open water fishing before deer hunting starts and the ice forms on the lake.  If I get 20 days of open water fishing in, it's been a good year.  So far I have gotten 20 days of open water fishing however it has been concentrated on mostly Lac Seul (14 days), Leech (3 days) and only 1 lowly trip to Mille Lacs Lake, the Mississippi River, and the Gulf of Mexico off of Florida.  With Mille Lacs now closed to walleye fishing, I suppose I could go and cast Shad Raps on the rocks for smallmouth but who am I kidding?  Bill and I usually get out trout fishing once so the number of trips is pretty much average however the makeup of those trips are significantly different than in the past.  Not that I am complaining yet you notice that no longer are the posts about last weeks fishing adventure.  This week I have had the opportunity to go up to Lac Seul again for 3 days of some of the greatest fishing I have experienced.  Our host, Bruce Wiley states that after fishing Lac Seul, it doesn't pay to fish anywhere else...........it's a hard philosophy to argue with yet there is a lot of water out there to be fished.  So Last weekend's fishing was in paradise at Lac Seul Outposts again, my 3rd trip there and 4th to Lac Seul this year. This year we were blessed to have Craig Biegert as our boat guest.  Craig is a friend of both my neighbor Pete and our host, Bruce.  He has a cabin on Big Pine Lake, the same as my friend Mark Mayerich, which is just a stones throw east of Bruce's place on Round Lake, just north of Mille Lacs. Craig has been battling Multiple Myeloma and to be honest, you'd never guess.  I was fortunate to have him in my boat and he was a perfect gentleman..........he even washed the sand off his shoes before going in the Ranger!  Craig has a few bone fractures associated with his condition so I made sure that if there was anything making him uncomfortable, he needed to let me know. Fortunately my boat is like riding on a cloud as we made the 34.5 mile trip into camp without an issue.

Wapesi River Emptying into the Lake

Wapesi Lake is usually our first stop, so on Wednesday of the the three days we were to be in camp it is where we fished. Wapesi is just northwest of the outpost, about a 10 mile boat ride, we go up to Pecker Point then turn west into the lake. Wednesday was kind of goofy weatherwise, clear and cool in the morning, it gave way to some pounding rain around noon. We had found a point off an island which was producing quite well when you could see the rain heading for the boat. One of the things I really appreciate these days is the bimini top I had put on this June.  We quickly assembled the top and secured everything just as the wind and rain came upon us.  Snug and dry inside the boat was nice, almost to the point of wondering why I carry a rainsuit anymore!  The Motorguide does an incredible job of keeping the boat in an "anchored" position as we rode out the storm squall.  Once it was evident that the weather was clearing we headed to an area which we felt Craig would enjoy, where the Wapesi River dumps into the lake.  It is gorgeous back there as the river tumbles over the rock as it essentially falls into the bay.  It is also a great place to fish however at this time of year the walleyes tend not to be stacked very well.  It's still a great place to fish as the current is always carrying a meal to the fish.  One of my favorite methods is using a Gulp twister tail as it is fairly shallow and where there is current, there is always some active fish, the total on Gulp was 8 walleyes and a northern pike.  It is one of my favorite spots to visit and fish while in Wapesi Lake, that's for sure.

As stated before, we launch in Deception bay on the southeast side of the lake and make our way through the rock strewn channels, around islands for a total of 34.5 miles to camp.  About 5 miles into our trip the outboard display went blank then the motor shut down to an idle.  The error code 114 showed up on the display, I put the motor back in neutral, reset the display, and the motor ran perfect until  the next 5 miles.  It shut down a total of 8 times then like magic, it ran great for the rest of the trip.  We have limited Wifi at camp so I e-mailed my mechanic at Frankies, he got back to me on the code meaning yet because it ran great, I haven't been able to look at the NMEA 2000 network cable connections in the back of the boat but will get to it sometime.  As always, Lac Seul is a great place to catch walleyes as well it is alot of fun hanging with the guys that I have been so graciously invited to attend!