2019 in Review

Cold day on the lake

Last Sunday the 2019 walleye fishing season is officially closed in Minnesota except for the border waters of the Mississippi River as well as Lake of the Woods.  A this time the Mississippi River stays open season all year however the Rainy River and Lake of the Woods will close in early April.  Minnesota's 2020 fishing opener is Saturday, May 9th and Ontario's walleye opener is the following Saturday, May 16th which starts the whole process again. 2019 certainly wasn't may most productive walleye season but who's complaining.  These days I seem to spend more time fishing Ontario than Minnesota as last summer included 3 days on opener fishing Leech Lake and 1 day fishing on Mille Lacs Lake.  It certainly didn't help that my boat was in the shop for over 9 weeks getting repaired from hitting the reef on Lac Seul, sounds like a good excuse huh!  It was also a pathetic year for ice fishing walleyes as there were 3 days at Red Lake, 3 days on Lake of the Woods and 1 day on Mille Lacs. Meanwhile I fished 10 days on Lac Seul this year, not a record however it can be looked at as fishing 1 day a week for 10 weeks on Mille Lacs, sounds reasonable doesn't it!  I did fish 4 days of largemouth bass in the Alexandria area as well about 4 trips on the Mississippi River behind the house in my jon boat, when you add it all up it comes to about a fishing trip every 12 days or so.  I guess that makes it sound better and I am not getting any younger.  Of course a day fishing in Naples l at the dealer getting a number of little things taken care of and hopefully it will be ready this week as it's been there since the first of December and I'm getting a little anxious about storage, the batteries, and other stuff.  I did go help my  friend Bill Lundeen this Monday as he had a large corporate group out ice fishing and we scouted some areas.  A large heave developed a few miles out from the landing and prevented us from getting to some of the better areas but according to Bill it went alright.  The first picture is one of my favorites from 2019.  We were on Red Lake last January 27th and a rattle reel went off early in the morning.  Getting up and catching the fish I wondered what time it was as it was still pretty dark.  The clock said 4:20 AM but it seemed cold and no wonder, it was -28.5 outside the ice house.  Certainly this winter has had it's days below zero but nothing like last winter.  I leave it at that!

Record crowd at the Perch Extravaganza

Last Saturday was the annual Johnson Portside Perch Extravaganza.  Usually a few of us get together and pull our wheel houses up to Mille Lacs, park them together and spend the weekend.  The Perch Extravaganza at Hunter's Point Resort is based on a perch fishing contest with the largest perch getting $500 however there are so few perch in the lake anymore, it has really morphed into a huge button drawing, you buy a button with a number and if they draw it you could win quite a number of good prizes including new ATV's, Generators's, coolers stuffed with fishing gear, and this year they had 3 new wheel houses.  The weather was fabulous and because of the cancellation of a few event's around the area, there were thousands of people attending.  Rumor has it they sold over 16,000 tickets so one's chances of winning were slim this year.  Never the less the anticipation is fun and as they say, you'll never win if you don't enter!  Also our group was worried about the ice conditions on Mille Lacs as the early snow and slush put a damper on things as the first year I attended we were flooded. Mark Applen has a small place just south of Hunter's and I met him there about 8:30.  We headed to Malmo to have breakfast then gathered our gear and headed out onto the lake.  I was surprised that one could dang near drive where ever you wanted, as well the ice was at least 30  inches thick.  We had never seen so many wheel houses on the lake, we estimated around 8000 houses.  It was a zoo as every piece of structure had a number of houses parked on top, literally there was few places to fish.  We did fish for a couple of hours, attended the drawing and headed back home.

One of the fishing shows I like is In Depth Outdoors as they have a new show every week.  A few weeks ago they were fishing in Pool 2 on the Mississippi River, just south of St. Paul. It is prompting me to get the jon boat ready as I remember fishing that area in the late winter with my friend Pete. It certainly might be worth a try. 

A Little Late But............

13", 1.5 pound Mille Lacs Perch

Last week I was in Anaheim Claifornia attending the MD and M West medical Device show. Admittedly I could have written the post from there but for some stupid reason my pictures on my phone did not transfer very well.....ugh!!  Anyway better late than never.  So my birthday was on February 4th and I decided to head up to Mille Lacs and try to catch some tullibees for my friend Mark Applen, who makes the best pickled fish ever, and tullibees are excellent to pickle.  Mark had gone up to Mille Lacs the night before and I knew he had gone out of Hunter's Point Resort. My plan was to head out of a resort that had a good bridge across the cracks that form near shore then once over, one can travel almost anywhere as long as you know where to return safely.  Midget Flat was my destination, a small flat south of 9 mile that tops out at around 30 feet, deeper than most which top out around 24 feet, yet I have done well with Tullibees out there so it seemed like the place to go.  Once on the ice I called Mark to see where he was, about 3 miles out towards the end of the line of houses, 15 minutes later I spotted him off to my right.  One thing nice about both Mark and I's ice houses, they are Salem's and you don't see very many of them.  Once you spot it, you can be pretty sure of your destination, especially when Mark's white pickup is parked next to it. Heading over, Mark was outside with his grandson Beckett, so I stopped to discuss my strategy.  "Well, no need to go out there, I have been seeing tullibees on the camera right here.  He was parked off a break in 32 feet of water so I decided to give it a try.  Tullibees are notorious for following your lure off the bottom and will travel quite high.  In fact, in the past I have almost pulled them to the surface, actually to where I could see them hit my lure.  At Lundeens I stopped to get some bait and I bought what I feel is the ideal tullibee lure, a spoon with about a 4 inch drop line off the bottom with a panfish type jig on it. The spoon attracts them and the lure below is tipped with a waxie and they hit that.  Well I went into Mark's house and immediately started marking fish.  I jigged on up about 5 feet off the bottom, definitely a tullibee when it hit the lure.   Tullibees fight really good and this one was no exception, however when it got close to the hole it was orange colored, not your typical silver.  Finally getting it to the top of the hole it was this huge perch, actually the biggest I have ever caught.  You can imagine my surprise when I brought it in, too bad it wasn't the Perch Extravaganza as I am sure I would have placed.

2 nice tullibees

After I got the perch in, I was still bound and determined to catch a tullibee.  It wasn't long before I hooked one and got it up, man they fight good, almost like those trout we got a couple weeks ago.  Tullibees are related to the whitefish, cisco, and herring family, a bony and oily fish that people usually smoke.  They have a texture when pickled like commercial pickled herring and are delicious.  I sat in Mark's house and managed to catch 6 of them, not a bad take for a couple hours of fishing.  I am sure that had I gone out to the Midget Flat there might have been more fish yet here I was fishing in a warm place sitting on a comfortable couch, not hard to take at all.  Beckett (Mark's 5 year old grandson) was watching me so the last 3 fish I gave him the rod to reel in the fish, he really got a kick out of that.  Not one to let a good opportunity slip by I made sure Beckett asked Grandpa why we were getting all the fish!  It's good to involve the kids in some light humor, and of course they really don't understand what your asking them but Grandpa Mark does!  You might as well get the little ones trained right and to make sure they know who is the master of the bite!  It was a good time as Mark cooked up some pork loins, fried up some sliced potatoes, it doesn't get any better than this for sure.  Getting home the job of cleaning the fish was done and because it's been fairly warm, I did this down by my pole shed.  Enough fillets for Mark to do his magic, I might have to go and get some more soon.  I did end up catching a 15 inch walleye as well, a nice bonus to a day's fishing.  With only 2 weekends left for the walleye season and the last being the Hunter's Point Perch Extravaganza, winter is ticking away.  I have yet to catch a sunfish or crappie this year, maybe in March, if there is even any ice left as we have no snow left with this weekend being in the upper 40's and next claims a 50 might show it's presence.

Making Ice



 

Slender Spoon from Custom Jigs and Spin

The cold has finally arrived.  Last year at this time we were struggling for ice as the wind and weather had created a huge ice island on Mille Lacs separated by a few hundred yards of open water completely around the lake making travel to the hot areas impossible.  This year is completely different.  The lake froze a couple of weeks ago and with this weeks temperatures hovering around 0, the lake is definitely making ice.  Hunter's Point resort on the east side of Mille Lacs reports they have a road staked to both Sliver and Boot flats, 6 miles out from the resort.  With a good 7 - 9" of ice, I have my Polaris Razor all set to go, my new Thermal X is ready, the electronics are all charged up, it's just a matter of picking the right day this weekend.  The Razor is my side by side ATV with a roof, windshield, and a special mounting for my Lowrance HDS7 from the boat.  With an accurate Lakemaster chip, I use it as a large screen GPS where as it very accurately displays the bottom contours in 1 foot increments.  It makes searching for that spot on the spot much easier.  Everything is marketing these days and ice fishing has hit a crescendo to say the least.  In this world it's very popular to promote products through association as the ice fishing world has Team Ice.  A group of companies and guys promoting ice fishing, a great example is the Slender Spoon.  Early ice fishing video's have featured this lure as the killer bait for this year's hard water season.  Being promoted via a number of web forums, the Minneapolis area is all but sold out of these lures, a testament to the effectiveness of the media.  They are light spoon that exhibits a slow "tantalizing" drop that makes them irresistible to walleyes and perch.  I haven't bit on the hype yet as my winter tackle box is void of these, probably will have to pick up a couple, just in case! 

Christmas in China

I am finally settling back into a normal routine after my trip to China.  For some reason it's taken a long time to readjust to being back home, maybe it's simply that fact that we are in the shortest daylight time of the year.  Early Sunday morning was spent in the Mercy Hospital emergency room as I must have gotten into something that resulted in a severe allergic reaction, something I haven't experienced in over 30 years. I still think my trip made me more vulnerable.  Christmas is upon us and it seems as though it was just yesterday.  We will head back to Eleva and see my mom as well,  spend time with the relatives.  My friend Mark Applen is fishing Red Lake right now and is going to leave his wheel house at the resort.  Red Lake is about 5 hours north of Minneapolis, on the way to Lake of the Woods (LOTW).  Our plan is the Thursday after Christmas head back up and either fish Red or continue on to Baudette.  We made a few phone calls and everyplace is booked for next week so we decided to stay in his wheel house, something I have done in the past.  I like staying out on the ice however because the lakes are stained, they pretty well shut down after sundown.  Mark has Direct TV in the ice house, a nice Honda generator, we will have all the comforts of home!  The time between Christmas and New Years was the time my friend Tom Emmons, Tom McAtee, and I would rent a house on Mille Lacs.  With Tom gone, it's probably good to start a new tradition as Mark and I had a blast fishing LOTW last year and the 50 inch sturgeon he caught.  Because Christmas is on Tuesday and I leave on Thursday, next weeks post could be late, delayed because of fishing, pretty good excuse if you ask me!

I will leave you with a picture from the Hotel we stayed at in China.  Although not a terribly religious nation, China fully embraces the spirit of the holiday's, at least from the commercial point of it.  Snowmen and presents, stocking and tinsel, it's all pretty interesting from a Christian perspective.  I think that it proof that we are more the same than different, any excuse to have a celebration is just fine with me!  Merry Christmas and be safe.

Wrong Strategy or Simple Greed!

The plan for Saturday's MTT Tournament was set, leave work early on Friday heading up to Mille Lacs for a possible hour or two of pre-fishing.  Stopping at Bill's for a possible last minute update I stopped for gas before meeting my partner, Mark Applen at his fish house.   The tournament rules meeting was at 7:00 at Hunter's Point Resort.  The organizers had a pretty nice set up with grilled brats and burgers available and an outside bar pouring drinks and serving beer.  My friend Joe Stanfield coined a new title for a common cocktail I enjoy, a Captain Morgan with Diet Coke.   He calls it a Skinny Pirate and about 80% of the bartenders figure it out.  When I ordered it Joe's way, the lady loved the name but couldn't figure it out.  Pointing to the bottle of Captain, she smiled............coming right up.   The rules meeting started, 2 flights leaving, 1 - 50 at 7:00 AM and the second 51 - 70 at 7:30.  We were officially #47.  No culling was allowed meaning once a fish is in the live well, it stays there.  Our limit on Mille Lacs is 4 fish each so each 2 man team could catch 8 fish however only the largest 6 fish could be entered.   The legal slot on Mille Lacs is under 18 and 28 and over.  The rules were specific, any fish on the 18 inch line and you would be disqualified.  Any fish on the 28 inch line would count.   Fish under 13 or dead fish turned in would result in a 0.12 pound penalty.   You must be recognized as in line for the weigh in before 3:00 (or 3:30 if in the 2nd heat), the official time was determined by the Tournament Director, no ifs, ands, or buts!  Winners would be announced at 4:30.  Deciding to relax rather than pre-fish we headed back to the ice house for a walleye and smoked rib dinner.  It was a pretty early evening as we had to be up by 5:30 and at Hunter's by 6:15.

Waking up at 5:30 we were greeted with a familiar loud hum of at least a billion lake flies that hatched through the night.  The trees, cars, houses, anything withing 100 feet of the lake was literally covered with these rather benign but annoying insects.  BTW, I do mean a billion.  This is one of the largest bug hatches I have seen in years, verified by the tremendous amount of carcasses floating on the lake.  Although a royal pain, we did manage to load and launch our boat arriving at Hunter's Point with plenty of time to spare.  All the boats staged just outside of their breakwater as the "Official" pontoon broadcast the National Anthem over the marine band radio, channel 68.  Boats were to parade by the pontoon single file and in order and away we were off.  Our strategy was to head back to the winning reef we fished last year.  About a 10 minute ride we arrived to an empty hotspot, fabulous!  Last year there was a tournament boat parked on our spot, although he did leave early.   Mark started with a short snelled leech while I long lined a crawler.  Within 5 minutes we had our first keeper fish, a nice 17 incher.  The next 2 hours were incredible.  By 9:00 we had 5 in the box, had caught over 15 walleyes and were well on our way to a respectable tournament limit.  The bite was definitely hot.  Our plan was to keep those fish over 16 inches, get our 6 then head out to try the flats for a 28+ fish.  Debating to keep that 15.5" inch fish, we decided to through it back as we "knew" we could get that last fish to meet our high expectations.  Having laid down a pretty good set of GPS tracks Mark was on the front of the boat when this huge muskie swam by.  I caught a glimpse of it's tail and my estimate was 48 inches plus.  Muskies are always exciting to see but not this time.  The slot fish simply stopped hitting for about a half hour after the muskie swam through.  When the fish decided to start biting again, all we could catch were those in the over 18 to 26 inch range.  With 5 fish and only larger fish hitting, we decided to go for broke and head to the flats for a big fish.  Noticing no one was on the Midget Flat, we cruised  over and started marking fish like crazy.  Missing a couple I finally felt something nail my crawler rig.  Feeding it line for a few seconds I set the hook and she was a hog.  As it came into sight it looked like the tourney winner.  Quickly landing the old girl a measurement revealed we'd have to stretch her another 2 inches to contend.  A quick picture and back she went along with the last of our hopes for that first place.  We weighed our fish at exactly 7.77 pounds, well maybe that number was lucky.  In the end we finished 16th out of 70 boats, with a pound separating 16th from 6th.  Our decision to throw back that last 15.5 inch walleye cost us the money.  Disappointed in our hearts we screwed up.  Never the less our "real" score would have put us in the top ten finishers 2 years in a row.  Oh well, I think there is a saying about being a "Legend in our own mind", that's us!  Next year we will definitely remember what we didn't do.  The first picture is the 26 inch walleye we coaxed out of the Midget and the second one is the bugs resting on a boat in the harbor.  It was a ton of fun as we did catch over 20 walleyes.

The plans are to head back up on Sunday to see if the hot bit is still on.

In The Money!

Fishing Mille Lacs as much as I do often prompts the question from my friends and colleagues, "Do you fish any tournaments on the lake?"  Mille Lacs is a popular lake for both professional as well as amateur tournament events.   Professional organizations include the Masters Walleye Circuit, FLW Walleye Tour, and Cabela's National Team Championship.  This events are the big money tourney's with top rated pros like Gary Parsons, Ted Takasaki, and others with total winnings in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  The amateurs events include the Wave Wacker, various resort sponsored tournaments, and the Minnesota Tournament Trail (MTT).  My answer is always the same...............Fishing tournaments are too much work as I would rather just have fun.  True, I am pretty competitive in the boat and the thought had often crossed my mind yet the opportunity never presented itself until Sunday.  My friend Mark Applen had received a slot in any MTT walleye tournament as a charitable gift auction item for his Eric Nicolin Applen Charity Golf Event.  Not wanting to waste a good prize, Mark and I bought the position for the full amount, maximizing the charitable gift.  We decided that we would fish day 2 of the MTT on June 6th, 2010.  It will be a fishing trip I'll never forget.

The tourney was held at Hunter's Point Resort located on the east side of the lake.  There were a total of 87 two man teams registered  for the day's fishing.  The first 50 boats would leave at 7:00 returning at 3:00 while the second flight, boats 51 - 87 left at 7:30 returning at 3:30.  The rules were simple, 8 fish per boat allowed, 6 could be weighed.  This would help to accommodate the no culling rule and define each teams overall strategy.  Rules included only fish under 18 inches or 1 fish 28 inches or better.  This meant that if your fish measured 18 inches, you would be disqualified but a fish could be on the 28 inch line and be fine.  The money strategy was simple, catch 7 fish under 18 then go look for the hawg.  This way you would have your 6 fish to weigh and if you got a big fish you could swap it out and include it in.  Looking at the results from the day before, no one caught a 28 inch fish.  With the no cull and lack of big fish caught we decided to get 8 fish over 17 inches to maximize or position.

Mark and I did some prefishing on Saturday night to validate a possible location strategy.  It has been a deep water bite with most coming out of 25 feet and deeper.  Going out at 7:00 on Saturday night we checked out a shallow rock/weed spot in 10 feet of water.  In an hour we had 5 walleyes measuring in that sweet spot of 17 - 17.9 inches long.  We decided that would be a good place to start in the morning.  Arriving at Hunter's at 6:30 I signed the necessary paperwork, attached a ribbon to my bow eye, and had the boat inspected.  The first flight took off on schedule and we got out a half hour later.  Heading south we arrived at our spot only to see a boat from the earlier flight parked 50 feet from our spot, working the area.  Fortunately they were off the mark as we began to fish the weed line.   Within 5 minutes Mark had our first fish.  Keeping the net low, we managed to boat our first keeper while our company was oblivious to our quick strike.  After cutting them off as they approached, it became apparent to them that the fish were not shallow.   10 minutes later they fired up the engine and left, leaving us by ourselves.  Apparently they did not see us net our fish, foolish move.   In the next 3 hours we proceeded to get our 8 fish, with at least 5 of them over 17.25 and a couple in the 16+ range.  Almost all the fish were caught on night crawlers with spinners in 10 feet of water.  As stated, the rare 28+ fish prompted our strategy to weigh 6 fish over 17 and with a penalty for dead fish, we headed back to Hunter's to weigh them.  Being the first in, they were somewhat taken back but acknowledge we had done well.  Our fish weighed 10.71 pounds, good enough for fist place!  Done for the day and turning our fish over, we decided to try some lead line tactics.  Within 30 minutes the rain showed up so we headed back to load up the boat and watch the weigh in.  We knew a big fish would knock us out and as luck would have it a 7.56 pound walleye showed up.  After all said and done we ended up with 3rd, just 1.44 ounces behind the 2nd place team.  Not bad out of 87 boats.  Mark and I had agreed before hand that in the rare chance we would win, all monies would be donated back to the charity.  Along with a side bet, we netted $1046 for winning and $168 on the side bet.  Not bad for 3 hours of work.  Keeping the side bet money to cover our expenses, the balance of the monies went for an excellent cause.  Check out http://www.eric-nicolin-applen-fund.com/ to learn more about our charity.  As far as my ego, sorry it got a pretty good boost on Sunday, one I will never forget!

Mille Lacs 2010 Maiden Voyage

Having skipped last week's opportunity to hit Mille Lacs Lake, it gave me time to get a few things caught up around the house.  Memorial Weekend is usually my first real excursion to the pond and this year was no exception.  Monday is a great time to hit the lake as most of the traffic is heading south and the lake is substantially less crowded.  The reports from Mille Lacs has been excellent with a lot of fish being caught and a good number of them acceptable for the live well.  Mille Lacs has special restrictions due to the current Native American netting which goes on in the spring, during spawning, and before the fishing season opens.  These restrictions include a bag limit of 4 fish which must be under 18 inches with one allowed over 28 inches.  In the past 5 years the average walleye was exceeding 18 inches and bringing home some fish to eat was difficult.  This year has started out much better with many slot fish available.  The Minnesota DNR regulates the total amount of fish harvest based on the Indian harvest and available sportsman harvest.  The last few years the total harvest has been less than half of the total allowed (around 460,000 pounds).  This year we may have the opportunity to utilize our full allowable take of fish.  The first picture is the largest fish I landed, about a 22 incher.

Deciding to go out of the west side, we headed for a deeper rock reef south of Sherman's Point.  My friend Bill Lundeen had insisted that we fish deep, 26 - 30 feet.  The water temperature was 62, a number I expected to be higher.  After 30 minutes on the rocks I called my friend Jon Bathke to see if he was on the pond.  He answered the phone but was at home.  A short discussion of yesterday's success changed my strategy.  Hitting a special spot on Sherman's Flat, I nailed a couple walleyes, one keeper and one to long.  Action was slow so we moved to another favorite spot of mine, The Cut.  Although we marked a ton of fish as well I had a very nice fish on, that was about it.  I finally conceded to Mr. Lundeen's suggestion, headed south and bobber fish the deep water gravel.  Picking a popular gravel bar, we anchored in 28 feet of water, away from the assembled crowd.  Using slip bobbers set about 18 inches off the bottom baited with a leech, I had our first fish within 5 minutes of anchoring.  The next 3 hours proved to be quite successful as we put 7 more in the box giving us a total of 8 walleyes with a couple of nice perch thrown in for a bonus.  One interesting experiment that I like to do is target the fish just below the boat which show up on my depthfinder.  My guests were a couple of frequent friends, Tom McAtee and Tom Emmons.    Mr. McAtee had some issues with his line so I let him use my bobber rig as I jigged directly under the boat, watching the jig and fish on m depthfinder.  It was just like ice fishing as I caught at least 4 walleyes this way.  In an interesting experiment, I have a very cool stereo system in my boat.  As I marked fish directly below me, I cranked the volume to a definite uncomfortable level (Lot's of bass!).  The fish never moved.  So much for noise scaring fish.  This picture is of my good friend Tom Emmons with a nice keeper walleye.

This weekend I will be competing in the MTT Walleye Tournament on Mille Lacs.  Held out of Hunter's Point Resort on the east side,  Mark Applen will be my partner in our attempt to capture the $5000 grand prize.  It should be interesting as I have never fished an open water tourney on Mille Lacs.  I will report our results next week with the hopes that both bank accounts will be substantially larger on Monday!