One week and Counting

Panther Martin Remote Tiller Steering

The end of April has been a whirlwind of activity but admittedly it does make the time fly.  With about a week to go before we head up north for opener there is still a lot to do around the house, heck the boat hasn't even been in the water yet, maybe this weekend.  While getting things ready I noticed that the sticker on the license plate attached to the boat trailer still had 16 on it, not good.  the assumption was that somewhere I renewed it on or near the expiration date and simply misplaced the new sticker, a very plausible scenario.  Attempting to renew it online only met with a reject which was strange because the plate number and VIN number was correct.  Calling the Minnesota Department of Motor Vehicles provideded me with the answer.........Sir, your trailer was not registered for the year 2016 and has been removed from the data base.  In order to get your renewal, you need to go to a nearby Deputy Registrar's office and sign an affidavit certifying that the said trailer in question has not been used since December 31, 2015.  Apparently I did not renew it last year and the 16 designation means that the plates expired January 1, 2016 and not December 31, 2016.  Therefore I have been pulling my boat trailer all of last year on expired plates.  So I go in and sign a document that the last time I used the boat trailer was in October of 2015, that satisfied the agent and I was able to secure new tabs for this season.  It sure would be convenient to issue boat trailer license renewals similar to the boat itself, a 3 year sticker and do it at the same time. Oh well, one more thing out of the way!! This weeks picture is of the Panther Martin Remote Tiller Steering module they added to the boat.  It is quite compact and works really good, at least in the garage.  Note the heat gun on the floor for removing my old plate sticker.  As stated in the past, I really enjoy trolling Shad Raps along the shorelines on Leech Lake and this should make it quite a bit easier to control the boat while trolling. The boat is pretty well put back together with the right strategic rod/reel combos that are best suited for walleyes on Leech as most of our strategy is slow drifting with a jig and minnow combination, as well the trolling rods are ready to go!

Plano deep 3700 Series Storage Boxes

This year I intend on using plastics more.  One of the things to make storage easier was purchasing a few of the Deep Plano 3700 plastic boxes to store all of my plastics in, as they generally are kept in their original packaging bags.  Using 3 boxes I can sort them by scented ones such as Gulp and PowerBait, BFishN type baits like the Pulse X featured last week, and plain 3 - 4 inch curly tail grubs in a number of pretty wild colors. I like to be organized in the boat and these boxes really do an excellent job of storing these lures and the Ranger's compartments were specifically made to hold this size so it really makes it nice. Last year I keep them in a soft sided tackle box but it proved to be extremely difficult to access everything and this really make it easy.  One of my goal is to commit to teaching my friend Bruce the art of fishing plastics on Lac Seul this year and will probably even set up one of my jigging rods for him so he doesn't have to switch his own lures.  I have been very successful in getting him in my train of thoughts on equipment such as depth finders and trolling motors, now it's time to introduce a new method he can use when the walleye bite slows down, or to really take advantage of it when the bite is hot.  Either way both the Minnesota Opener and the Canadian Opener should be in prime!

I did pick up our Team Walleye hats and the honorary shirts for those who bring their boats.  They are pretty sharp and I will guarantee that we will be noticed on the lake!  pretty much everything is a go as my friend has confirmed our annual bait situation, so we are set there.  Lot's of stuff to get caught up on, the garden needs tilling, the lawn needs mowing and fertilizing, boat need to be checked out. The list never ends.

Back on The Water!!!

10 Beautiful Rainbow Trout

Well, it's been dang near a month since I have been out fishing, for a lot of reasons, or so I say.  The rivers too high, it's raining, Mille Lacs is closed, all great excuses however they don't do much for my reputation!  I do have to admit that I really miss the September/October night pulling cranks on Mille Lacs for those shallow hogs that come onto the reefs at night, maybe next year. Anyway the trhird week in October usually signals it's time for my annual fishing outing with my good friend, Bill Lundeen.  He has a couple of very special lakes that we have gone to each year for the last couple and they have yet to disappoint.  One of the reasons I get invited back is my vow of silence on the specific lakes that we fish.  Not that they are that far from his place but it probably would not take too much to fish them out and it is nice to be the only one's on the lake, especially when it's so beautiful out.  Wednesday, October 19th was our set time so I took the day off and drove up to his shop on Mille Lacs.  From there we had to load up the canoe, trolling motor batteries, trolling motor, depth finders, and equipment like nets, rods, ice, and bait.  While I used plain old worms, Bill likes to experiment with Gulp, which does work quite well.  After getting the canoe launched and set up we headed out on the lake with a pretty simple setup.  3 foot, 2 hook small spinner snell for the worms and a 1 1/4 ounce bell sinker to act like a small downrigger ball to get our bait down 25 to 30 feet below the surface.  It was crazy as I got a hit right away.  These trout are quite aggresive and put up a good fight, often breaking the surface, they can actually be hard to get in.

Beautiful spot to fish

 Also with the big sinker sometimes they leverage themselves against it and actually free themselves. The other issue is when in the net they flop around such that it can break off the hooks that are snagged in the net and break.  That is not fun as rerigging in the canoe is somewhat difficult and takes time away from the true fishing.  Never the less in 3 hours we had our 10 trout, 5 each.  We would have ended 20 minutes earlier however yours truly was in charge of netting and making sure the trout got put in the cooler however our 10th one flopped out of the canoe so we were relegated to another 15 minutes of trolling before we got the last fish.  In addition to the trout we also got some real nice 9.5 inch sunfish, definitely a bonus.  I am looking forward to trout on the grill as well my friend Mark Applen makes an awesome pickled fish and last year I gave him a few fish to pickle and they were amazing!  The lake sits down into a ravine so even if it's windy, it's quite fishable.

12 inch Crappie.

With all of our trout caught by noon the plan was to load up Bill's 16 foot Lund and go out for some of those late fall crappies.   This is a lot of fun and represents the classic fall pattern where you cruise the 25 - 35 foot holes looking for suspended school of fish on your depth finder.  It actually works pretty well as we located a number of schools out in the middle of nowhere, no structure around, quite textbook for sure.  Bill had bought a Motorguide i5 front controlled trolling motor like I have on my boat, the one with the fabulous anchor function.  You can anchor within 5 feet of your anchor point so when we found fish we simple hit the button and stayed right on top of them.  Our bait of choice was Gulp again, the small 1 inch minnows. I was surprised how aggressive they hit them but who's complaining, I caught a number of 12+ inch crappies on them, WOW!  Also you could catch 5 or 10 fish on the same bait before you had to replace.  I know that Bill is hot on his Gulp and we never opened the real minnows that we took along just in case.  The strategy was quite simple, just drop your 1/32 oz jig off the side of the boat to the bottom then reel it up 5 feet or so and basically vertical jig.  Often the problem with a light jig like that and how deep you are fishing is that the fish can hit the jig on the way up, you feel the hit but it is hard to hook them.  Never the less it's fun and we ended up with about 15crappies for the afternoon, as as stated some real nice ones at that.  Admittedly it got pretty cold when we were out there.  Fished till about 5:45 and I would say it was at least 43 degrees with a north wind taking the heat away.  I have to admit that I was getting pretty cold but it was hard to leave.  It was getting dark anyway so when Bill declared the day over, I was definitely ready.  We put the boat away then got back to the shop where Kathy had steaks prepared for us along with grilled cabbage, wild rice, Spaghetti squash, and mushrooms.  It was delicious and a perfect way to end the day.  After supper we cleaned the fish and I headed home, a very successful day of fishing and a nice day off in the middle of the week.

Saturday night was a tough for me as I ate a chicken sandwich on a croissant and ended up staying overnight in Mercy Hospital for anaphylactic shock do to a severe allergy reaction.  This time it appeared to be caused by wheat, just another thing to deal with.  I am ok now but it's not a lot of fun wheezing and breaking out in full body hives, 3 different times that night.  Maybe it's just the problem of getting old, who knows.  Saturday I will be heading to Wisconsin to fish with my wife's cousin Jason Rombalski and  his dad Andrew.  Both are great guys and maybe we can find some crappies similar to yesterday's trip with Bill, I am sure the opportunity should exist.  We are going to fish Long Lake, north of Rice Lake, Wi and the weather looks to be beautiful.  This also gives me a chance to take my boat out for the last time and winterize it as my motor has a feature that does this for you automatically.  This will probably be the last trip of the season with the boat and before ice fishing as deer hunting is coming up.  Hopefully we will make ice quickly as I am getting the Ice Cabin ready to head to Red Lake as soon as we can.  here hoping for a similar report next week.

Time For Trout

Absolutely Gorgeous 23" Rainbow

During the last couple of years mid October has been the time where I take a day of vacation, drive up to my friend Bill Lundeen's and head up to our secret lake to go trout fishing.  There are actually a lot of lakes within 2 hours that the DNR stocks with rainbow and brown trout, especially the old iron ore pits north of Aitkin, MN.  These lakes are usually spring fed, clear, and deep and are perfect for sustaining trout.  This Monday was my third trout fishing trip with Bill and I have to admit that it is a unique experience to say the least.  Bill had everything loaded up in his truck so all I needed to do was pack my fishing rod, a few lures that I thought might be useful, and a camera.  The lake that we fish does not have a boat landing and is only accessible to the public via a canoe.  It's quite a trek downhill to the small canoe landing and I can attest that going down is a lot easier than going up. The morning started out literally on the wrong foot as I opened the back door of the truck to get the trolling motor battery out, it had shifted and upon opening the door it fell out directly on my right foot. The same foot that got crunched when I tipped my motorcycle, the same foot that has some arthritis in it, there were a few choice words with an accompanying dance to express my pleasure. We used to have a saying "It'll feel better when it stops hurting" so we loaded the canoe up onto a nice wheeled bracket and in 10 minutes we were ready to fish.  I used a simple spinning rod rigged up with a small spinner rig with a single hook, a 3/8 ounce bell sinker, and a half a worm.  Bill had the same rig however he was using a bubble gum colored Gulp trout worm.  It was a gorgeous day as the lake was like a mirror, much different than the 20 mph winds predicted.  Within 2 minutes I had the first fish, a nice 12 inch rainbow trout and by the first hour we had 6 of our total limit of 10.  The next fish was a monster as Bill hooked what he thought was a nice largemouth bass however it definitely felt different.  As it came to the surface he had hooked the largest trout he had ever had so now the pressure was on me to make sure I would land it successfully with the net.  Fishing in a canoe is quite interesting as I was sitting in the front and can't turn around other than twist my body.  My feet are stuck facing forward with the fish bucket between them and the net in my left hand.  This fish wasn't too interested in getting into the net and I wanted to make sure and scoop it head first.  After a few tries I finally was able to get the fish in the net after about a 5 minute battle.  This was too good a fish to simply put it in the bucket and I was concerned that it could flop out of my grip so it stayed in the net.  Luckily we were close to the landing and decided to head back and get a few pictures to savor the moment and recover from all the excitement.   After settling down we headed back out in the lake to see if we could get 3 more trout to fill out our limit. Up to this point Bill had the hot fishing pole however I tend to be the late bloomer and actually caught the last 3 fish including a nice one of my own. We headed back to the bait shop with a nice mess of trout and the plan was to clean them, get something to eat before heading out back again to catch some crappies.

9.25 - 10.25 inch Crappies

Back at the shop we measured the 2 biggest trout,  Bill's went 23 inches and weighed 3 pounds 13 ounces, not bad.  I put my largest on the scale and announce 21 inches!  Bill looked at me and said "Dave, you have to start at the 0 inches end, not the 36 inch end!"..............damn, only 15 inches.  Still a nice fish. After a hot bowl of soup we loaded up his 16 foot Lund and headed to a small lake west of Mille Lacs Lake to try for suspended crappies.  In the fall when the water cools down the crappies tend to suspend over the deep water.  On lakes were the deepest part is 30 - 35 feet, its fairly easy to motor around until you mark them on the depth finder and mark them we did.  Hovering 10 to 15 feet about above the bottom it seemed as though wherever you went in the basin, crappies were there.  It did take a while to find the larger ones as we did catch a number of small fish in that 5 - 7 inch range.  Using the trolling motor to hover on a position we were able to drop our jigs as we watched them fall to the correct depth on the depth finder then work the magic till we get a hit.  Bill had us pull those fish up very slowly as if you bring them to the surface too fast and you release them, their air bladder will keep the fish floating and most tend to die.  Although the eagles like this, we were careful making sure our fish survived the release.  The other thing that I learned is Gulp minnows work very well for this, unfortunately it was somewhat too late as Bill out fished me 3:1.  By the time I figured it out it was time to leave with our 11 fish in ranging from 9.25 to 10.25 inches.  Not monsters by any means but they are nice fish.

Mirror image!

Saturday was spent picking apples and in the afternoon I decided to take the boat out and see if the trolling motor still works.  Because I hit the rocks the week before it would also be a good time to check for any vibrations cause by a possible bend prop shaft.  I decided to try Lake John, just southwest of Annandale, maybe a little far but it has a nice landing and I know the lake pretty well. I will admit that the new boat is taking a while to get used to as it's quite a bit bigger than my old 620T and can be a hand full by myself.  Arriving at the lake it was as I expected, empty landing with the dock still in, perfect for a one man show.  Coming off the trailer nice, I secured the boat, parked the truck, and was ready to go.  Earlier I had set the shallow water alarm on the Evinrude display to 3 feet thinking that would be a great idea yet it's sort of a pain in the butt as I motored out of the landing area into the main lake.  Although it was plenty deep enough the weed tops kept sounding the alarm, I finally shut it off.  With the lake calm and about a mile long I decided to open it up and see what it would do.  With the colder and dense air the motors tend to run faster and I hit a new high in RPM's, 6050 with the fastest MPH at about 60.5.  In the warmer weather and with 2 guys it falls back to about 5850 RPM's and 58 mph.  I suspect that the reports of 62 MPH with one guy and a half tank of fuel (200 pounds lighter) is more than possible.  Like we did on Monday I searched the deeper basin's for crappies but did not have much luck. On the other hand the trolling motor worked perfectly AGAIN!  This time the water was calm and with no wind to set the direction of travel needed to stay in one spot, nevertheless it's performance was fabulous.  No twisting of the cords as the motor only traveled about 300 degrees before reversing itself to change directions.  Previous issues would have the motor just keep rotating until the cords were completely wrapped around the main shaft.  Working different areas, different heading lock modes, and trying the jog functions, everything seemed to be perfect let's hope all of the problems have been solved.

Time is running out as I need to start putting things away for the winter.  The boat heads back to Frankie's on Monday to fix a few things left that need to be addressed.  I've started pressing apple cider and am thinking about trying to make hard cider this year, we'll see.  The mid term weather forecast shows above normal temperatures thru the middle of November, I might just keep the boat available for one more crappie fishing trip yet deer hunting is right around the corner and I need to get ready for that.  For the most part I have finished the work on my Salem Ice Cabin, replaced all the screws with Stainless Steel and finally installed my wheel skirts which should keep things warmer when on the ice.  So much to do, so little time!