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. 

Easter Weekend

Beautiful Stream Caught Brown Trout

Time continues to fly like crazy, here it's another weekend coming up....Easter Weekend.  Today is Thursday, April 18 and it marks the 2 year anniversary of the passing of my mother, Betty Anderson.  It has changed our visiting habits as Easter was always a tradition we spent with my wife's uncle, we will still do that this weekend, however we will not drive down home to see mom.  It just makes you think about things.........oh well.  So in the fishing side of things, not much is happening except a lot of lakes around Minneapolis are ice free.  With only 3 weeks till opener, lets hope that old mother nature can put the ice melt on high and Leech will be ice free by May 10th.  We've had it really close a few time where we had to fish only certain spots as the ice was still filling up certain bays.  And who could not remember 2013's Team Walleye Leech Lake Opener when the ice never did go out and we ended up spreading Ron Edberg's ashes on the ice instead of fishing.  The forecast looks great for the next couple of weeks and with the warm sun and rain, I am sure things will be okay.  Actually the mid winter's heavy snow prevented as much ice as there could have been so it might not take too long.  I also think that a late ice out produces more fish as the male walleyes are quite shallow and the females may still be waiting to spawn. So earlier this week my good friend Mark Applen went with a friend of his down near Whitewater State Park, northeast of Rochester, MN to do some stream trout fishing with light tackle and spinners.  Telling Mark I needed a good picture for the blog, on Monday I got this text with a note that the fishing was fabulous.  I am glad that someone is at least getting out and wetting a line.  Embarrassingly I haven't been out since January 23rd of this year.  The heavy snows of February and March as well as my birthday put a damper on any practical fishing outings the last 3 months.  Of course this has left me posting my friends adventures but hey....at least someone is fishing!

Panther Remote Controlled Steering

So with Team Walleye's 46th Annual Leech Lake fishing opener in 3 weeks, it's probably a good idea to head up to Bill's and get my boat out of his pole shed.  That in itself is a long story but it definitely needs to happen this weekend.  There is a lot of things to do before taking her out on the water as she's been hibernating since October.  There are new software updates for all of the electronics on the boat, engines need to be started, especially the kicker as it hasn't been run for at least 9 months.  One of strategies that has proven to be successful is trolling #5 shad raps however it's taken a few years to get the hang of slow forward trolling with the 9.8hp kicker motor, especially now that I have the iTroll system for adjusting speed and the remote Panther T5 steering system, it is actually pretty nice.  My goal is to get more proficient with it and head to Lake Erie.  Putting in a plug for In Depth Outdoors, they had a great show on last week regarding fishing Lake Erie.  Actually one of their techniques was to use the front trolling motor running in the opposite direction of the kicker motor to help maintain a more constant speed.   I was on the forum, and actually asked the host, James Holst a question regarding this technique and he actually answered, that was pretty cool.  I recommend looking at all their recent shows, one of their recent ones was Lake Trout fishing in the fall on Lake Nipigon.  What was interesting is it was in the same area that I fished with back in the early 1970's with my friends the Tollefson's and the Semingson's.  That went back on the bucket list as well!

On Tuesday I pulled off my 54" front mounted snowblower attachment off the John Deere X734 lawn tractor.  The real purpose is to assure that the amount of accumulating snow is finished for the spring.  Now comes the hard part of cleaning the lower deck, sharpening the blades and getting everything properly greased then mounting it on the tractor.  It is on of these new...."simply drive on" attachment but after looking at the YouTube video, it doesn't look that easy.  Oh well it has to be done!