Uffda!

All I can say is time sure does fly.  It seems as though I had just finished my last post and here it is, another week..............uffda.  For those who don't really understand what Uffda mean, click here and you can learn more about it!  So after 5 days of fishing in Canada, there has been plenty of things to do around the house, with the main objective of getting the jon boat out and running to fish the Mississippi River this summer.  Last Summer my Canadian fishing got in the way but have vowed to not let that happen again.  Last Friday was our annual trek to Brainerd International Raceway (BIR) to watch the NHRA drag races.  These are the big boys like John Force, Tony Schumacker, driving funny cars and top fuel dragsters that hit 320 mph and cross the finish line 1000 feet down the track in less than 4 seconds from a dead stop.  It's pretty incredible to watch as the round just shakes as the cars fly by.  As always we are guests of my good friend Kevin Sonsalla.  My neighbor Lory Brasel went with as it is always a good time with Kevin.  Friday is a qualifying day so the big boys start their first round at about 3:00, make a run then go back to their tents and tear down the motor completely and rebuild it, ready for the second round of the day at 6:00.  Kevin gets us into the Tony Schumacker tent where we can watch them rebuild the engine, have a nice dinner, refreshments before heading back to the track.  On one of the Funny Car runs I decided to record a video on the phone and in this case one of the cars blew an intake manifold, which in turns blew off the entire body.  I caught it on the video which is above, stop it at the 8 second make and you will see the resulting explosion and as the video ends you can see the body parts floating to the ground.  It was pretty amazing as I have been told that this is a potential failure so it is made to blow up safely, sure...... These engines run of Nitromethane which has 2.3 times more power than gasoline.  I have been told these engines at full throttle us 1 gallon a second.  Either way it was fun and quite amazing to see a car go that fast in that short of time.  Enjoy the video!

David Grant and a 22 pound King Salmon

So my second goal was to get my jon boat out and ready for fishing the river this weekend.  The
motor hasn't been run in 2 years and even though it has Non-oxygenated gas in it, it still isn't good to sit that long.  The other issue is one forgets about the nuances of the motor, like this 25 hp Mercury tends to flood easy and doesn't need to be choked very hard.  Once the water cuffs were put on, a few pulls with the choke fully on and the engine sputtered to life.  Unfortunately that's all it did and it would not run consistent.  Remembering it had a tendency to easily flood, a quick run to the auto parts store and new plugs seemed to help somewhat but no entirely.  The next step was to drain the gas and put in some newer stuff.  The gas smelled OK but one never knows so after finishing that task, a few pulls on the rope and voila, it started then stayed running!!  This Merc 25 hp has a goofy system whereas the throttle and gear shift is all in one.  You can only increase the throttle slightly before it shifts into gear as you pass a point on the twist grip.  Well up to this point it would simply kill once you passed that point however this time it kept running, and boy did it smoke.  Another sign of being flooded, it seems impossible that it could happen that fast.  Anyway she cleared out and after filling the tank with new gas, she's ready to go for the weekend.   It was great to get everything going and am looking forward to getting back on the river for some great smallmouth and catfish fishing!  Needing a nice fish picture for this week, my good friend David Grant sent me this one of the 22 pound King Salmon he caught on Lake Michigan this week.  I remember fishing this time of year on Lake Michigan in my 16 foot Lund Pro Angler with a 50 hp Merc.  My friend Kevin Aiona and I would go out and get kings, Coho's, and Lake Trout as we had the boat decked out with down riggers.  One can fish 3 lines per guy so we always had 2 lines down on the down riggers, maybe 40 - 60 feet down.  To the side we had Dipsey Divers that took your bait down and away form the boat, I suspect those were about 40 feet down.  The last two line were straight back of the boat, we used brightly colored crankbaits or J plugs.  We would get plenty of fish and the great thing about it was we'd take turns fighting the fish while the other guy reeled in all of our gear.  This meant we could fight the fish directly instead of keeping the motor running so we would not get tangled up and having to reel the fish against the 2 mph boat speed.  Anyway Dave, that's a nice fish and I'll bet it tasted great!

So the plan is to hit the river this weekend.  Hopefully there will be some nice pictures of the results.  As stated before, our next trip to Lac Seul is planned for September 17th, admittedly I'm so spoiled!!

Serious Time on the River

Lory's 24" channel cat caught on a crankbait!

My neighbor Lory and I decided to get out on the river late Sunday afternoon to experience both the crankbait bite and to sit down and anchor, enjoying bottom fishing for catfish, carp, and redhorse suckers.  Due to the recent rains, the water had come up about a foot so the current would be faster and anticipated that it would push the smallies up close to shore.  We traveled all the way above the city of Dayton and fished the north shore for a couple miles or so with crankbaits.  There was a lot of junk flowing in the water but never the less it was quite a bit clearer than I expected and we could easily stay close enough to hit the rivers edge in striking distance of at least some smallies.  Unfortunately the water coming up had shut them down and we only got 3 smallmouth, not very well considering we usually catch around 10 of them including some nicer ones.  The high water give them a lot of extra places to hide under the brush.  lory did get a real nice 24 inch channel cat that hit his crankbait with vengeance. Normally one doesn't think about catching catfish on crankbaits but I have caught them before and a 24 incher can really put up a fight for sure.  Well it was a great start to the evening however the plan was to drift and cast till about 7:30 them anchor behind and island closer to the landing and fish the bottom while enjoying a bottle of excellent Merlot that I had brought back from Carlos Creek Winery a couple of weeks ago.  We got anchored just before the sun went down as we baited our hooks and put the rods in the rod holders, a nice way to do this. Opening the wine I poured each of us a glass just as a pontoon came out of the side channel, a husband and wife opening their bottle of wine.  We held up our glasses and gave them a toast for the beautiful evening, they were quite surprised, two river rats anchored in the hole, fishing catfish and drinking fine wine, they laughed!  It was a pretty good experience as we got down to catching some serious fish.

WOW!!!  30 Inch Channel catfish

Ever since fishing halibut in Alaska, I really like using circle hooks.  It takes a little discipline to reel straight instead of setting the hook however often times the fish will simply try to swim away and set the hook by itself.  The nice thing about circle hooks is you can let the fish take the bait as long as you want and the intent is that when the hook hits the corner of their mouth it rotates and always hooks in the lip area and not deep in their throats.  This makes for good release survival and easy hook removal.  My first fish was a nice 22 inch Golden Redhorse, they are so pretty and I have caught them many times before.  The second fish I caught was a bruiser, a huge 30 inch channel catfish, I am assuming at least 15 pounds, and boy do these things fight. They can really bulldog their way around the boat, and as I said before, by moving away the fish virtually sets it's own hook.  I picked up the rod out of the rod holder and she was solidly hooked, the battle was on!  Even though I didn't have much line out this fish was not about to show itself right away.  At first I thought it was a big carp as most of the catfish I catch are relatively small in size, usually under 20 inches.  I got her up to the surface just in time for Lory to scoop it up in the net and we brought her on board.  It was the largest catfish I can ever remember catching, even bigger than the ones that we used to catch with m buddy Kevin Aiona on the river.  I had Lory snap a few memories and back in the water she went.  Never the less it was a very nice fish and one that I'll never forget. The circle hooked worked great and she swam away no worse for the wear.   I have some employees at work that would have really loved to have this fish for supper and if I can find some time maybe I'll take him out for an evening of fishing.  I think both of us would enjoy for certain. We have a lot of people from Southeast Asia working for us, many from Laos and they love to eat fish.  I showed them a picture as I have told them many times that I catch catfish in the river above Anoka, they just drooled!

Beautiful Golden Redhorse

Friday is our annual invite to BIR (Brainerd International Raceway)  by Kevin Sonsalla, a special friend and business associate.  He does a lot of work for Tony Schumacher, the NHRA drag racing star.  He usually invites us up on the Friday before the big weekend and we enjoy the hospitality passes, get fed, watch them put together the car and all sorts of interesting things. This year Lory is going with us again, it makes for a real nice day as he will meet us at Cabela's and we'll go from there.  I am sure we will run into our neighbor Tim Kuntz who just got done remodeling an old school bus into the coolest RV you've seen in a while.  Because he is a die hard Viking fan he's going to rename the School Bus the Skoal Bus.  Usually we like to sit with him on the top of the bleachers as the view is pretty good from up there.  It's quite amazing to watch those cars go from standing still to 320 MPH in less than 5 seconds, the whole earth shakes.  On the way up I'll have Kevin stop at Bill's and we have to pick up more wild rice.  I have been giving it to some of my good customers in California and are getting rave reviews.  It's about the time he will start harvesting rice again, not and easy job for sure but the fruits of his labor are quite good.  I will leave you with a picture of the Golden Redhorse that I caught Sunday night.  I think they are such a pretty fish, put up a good fight and provide a lot of good entertainment.  I can assure you we never caught them this big in the Buffalo River when I was a kid.  I can tell you that it's a pretty relaxing way to fish, that's for sure.  Also my friend Bruce heads to Lac Seul this weekend and I am anxious to hear how well his new "anchor" works.  Sometimes fishing the river behind my house feels like I am all the way in Canada, it is pretty special and you can almost have the whole river to yourself!

Taking The Weekend Off

At the Races

With severe storms, high winds, and colder weather scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday of last week I decided to go up with my friend Kevin Sonsalla and Lory to BIR (Brainerd International Raceway) on Friday instead of picking up my boat at Frankie's. The GPS board in the Motorguide needed replacing so I dropped it off on Monday but they still had some stuff to do and it wasn't going to be fully done so it worked out well.  The NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) has their annual race week at BIR and all the big boys are there for this national event.  Although there are many classes of drag racers, the stars of the show were the Top Fuel Dragsters and the Funny Cars.  Kevin always get's tickets to the events as he has his contacts with Don Schumacher Racing so we get right in and have special hospitality passes to DSR's area's which is pretty cool.  The races are amazing as both the Top Fuel's and Funny Car's cross the finish lines in under 4 seconds, often at speeds over 320 miles per hour. That's damn fast when you consider they start from a dead stop and race to the 1000 foot mark, which is less than 1/5th of a mile.  They moved the finish line back from a 1/4 mile when the speeds started getting unsafe.  It seems like they have caught up to those old times again.  One interesting thing we saw was 2 Funny Cars that had lined up and both crossed the finish line in under 4.0 seconds.  The track announcer stated that this was only the 3rd time in NHRA history that both cars lined up broke the 4 second mark.  Even more interesting was the next 2 drivers that lined up and they also broke the 4 second mark...2 in a row.  The sound is deafening as you can feel the speed as they go by.  It's quite interesting for sure and with the cool weather coming in, things were bound to get faster, which they did!  Sunday's high was only around 60 degrees F and with the cloud cover the track was insanely fast.  Checking the results on Sunday night 4 NHRA speed and time records were broke including a 3.68 ET for top fuel, the fastest time ever recorded at 332.75 mph in Top Fuel, a 329.58 mph fastest Funny Car time ever, and a record setting 3.664 ET but could not be verified via NHRA rules.  When we were there the announcer gave a update on one run, at 660 feet the Funny Car had accelerated from a dead stop to 288 mph in less than 3 seconds while covering the last 340 feet in another second. Uffda!!!

Grapes!

It's really getting to be garden time and although the corn and pickles are done, the tomatoes, peppers, carrots, squash, raspberries, onions, are in full harvest mode. This is the first year that I have raised grapes and with the help of Lory we actually got a few this year. They are pretty flavorful, have seeds in them, and are probably pretty useless for wine but it's sure cool to see them hanging on the vines.  I have to take care of them this winter, making sure the roots get covered an protected from a hard cold January.  That should be pretty easy as I have lot's of leaves and a good system to pick them up with.   My carrots are really doing well this year.  Usually I dread planting them then having to thin them out to assure they have room to grow then I never do. This year I bought the coated seeds, they are about the size of a BB and really easy to plant. Not crowding allows then to grow nice and big so everyone is amazed at my carrots this year.  I love carrots and eat them raw right out of the garden.  My dad always said they were good for your eyes and to this day I still have 20/15 vision, not bad for an old guy!  Somewhere I read that you can also cover any carrots left in the garden with leaves such that the ground doesn't freeze and you can harvest them all winter long, I don't really know about that but it might be worth a try.  As well the tomatoes are really

Nice Looking Carrots 

starting to ripen.  I've canned tomatoes in the past however it seems like all they do is sit in the jars for years until they rot, I clean out the jars and repeat the process.  Well a few years ago I decided that the tomatoes are best use to make salsa and quite honestly I seem to be getting better at it every year.  I hate soupy salsa's preferring the thicker, cling to your chip type and have perfected my process.  There are a couple of secrets and I know many simple don't want to take the time but first is after peeling the tomatoes I squeeze out the juice then put them in a pot to boil it down.  The second secret is towards the end add a large can of tomato paste, it's like adding cornstarch to gravy. Anyway the batch I made the other day was excellent with a lot of garlic, lime juice for increasing the acidity, and 6 different peppers from the garden.  I also have about 6 different varieties of tomatoes, most of them heirloom type as I think they have considerably more flavor.  One of the other items in the garden that are huge this year are the potatoes.  I dug one hill up the other day and I swear it yielded 5 pounds of huge tubers.  I like to leave them in the ground and use them as needed because they stay fresher that way.  I might have to take some to Canada with me next month.  I hear that potatoes have to be in a commercial bag that they come in from the store, that wouldn't be hard to do, we'll see.

Picking up the boat before the weekend as I just got my snaps for the new replaceable carpet and can get them installed.  The new GPS board on the Motorguide needs calibrating so there's a great excuse to get out on the water this weekend.  It's easy to do just press a couple of buttons and drive in circles, something I do very well.  Countdown to Lac Seul is now 3 weeks away, I'm getting excited!

Dog Days of Summer

10 inch Walleye on the Mississippi River

There is a lot going on these days, enough to limit the fishing to a few hours a night on the river.  The current situation on Mille Lacs has turned off a number of my usual fishing partners but there's always someone to hit the river with.   Now that the jon boat has a 25 hp motor, it's a bit more enjoyable fishing the river as it pushes the boat about 20 mph upstream, about 67% faster than the old 15 hp.  Joining me on Saturday night was my good friend Mark Applen who had never been on the river with me before.  Loading up the crawlers, his poles, some sucker minnows, and a few adult beverages, we launched at Blair's and headed up the river about 4 miles.  In Old Town Dayton, where the Crow River meets the Mississippi, the two waters take almost the entire length from our launching point to finally mix.  The Crow flows through mostly farmland and tends to be quite "muddy" while the Mississippi has more of a flow through forest regions and has a number of dams upstream to help settle the water.  It's quite noticeable where on the north side of the river, it's pretty clear while the south side, where the Crow empties, stays fairly muddy.  I tend to like fishing on the north side, although I cannot be certain it's better, it is more fun to fish water that looks cleaner.  Mark and I had a number of nice smallmouth on the lines but never landed anything larger than 14 inches.  Lot's of little ones, which is good and maybe with the water level dropping, one might have to change our fishing strategy.  As we approached closer to home the plan was to anchor and fish for whatever shows up on the end of the line.  Mark rigged up a sucker minnow while my pole was the old standby, a gloob of night crawlers fished on the bottom.  Night Crawlers are the super bait of the river, anything and everything likes them and besides, one never knows what's at the end of your line.  It wasn't long before that familiar tap-tap was felt, nothing big as it sort of bit like a small catfish, which the river is full of.  A minute later the hook comes up bare, threaded another 2 crawlers on the hook and the same thing, tap-tap-tap and nothing.  Now catfish are greedy fish and even if they bite light eventually they swallow the entire bait and end up hooked.  Well whatever was stripping my bait, it couldn't have been too big and I soon found out.  Finally hooking one, the fish appeared on the surface, a 10 inch walleye, interesting.  I caught another one soon after, there must have been a school of them hanging in the 10 foot current break, just below the island.  I suspect that as the water continues to drop it will concentrate the fish into the deeper holes and it will be time to try and see if we can locate some larger walleyes, I know they are there.  We really didn't get too many more fish and suspect that they are up in the shallower waters at dusk.  Loading the boat we headed back to the pole barn where a number of the neighbors stopped over and helped finish the remaining refreshments.

Test run after a rebuild

The other highlight of the weekend was attending the Lucas Oil Nationals at the Brainerd International Raceway (BIR), site of one of the fastest drag racing tracks in the United States.  Another good friend and business associate Kevin Sonsalla met myself and my neighbor Todd at Cabela's and headed north.  It been a number of years since I've been to BIR and it was alot of fun to get back up and watch the race.  Last week's post mentioned that the teams would tear the engines down and rebuild them with new heads, pistons, rods, and bearings after each run.  With only about 2 hours between runs, these guys did it in about an hour and it was pretty amazing to watch.  Because of Kevin's VIP passes, we got to eat supper in the hospitality area and I even had the chance to get Tony's autograph for Lyn's cousin Micky, an avid race fan.  We watched Tony test start the engine after the last rebuild of the night before we headed back to the bleachers at 5:00 to watch the finish.  The fastest we saw were times in the 3.83 seconds for 100 feet with speeds up to 313 mph.  Overall the race saw 2 track records set, the first was a Funny Car time breaking the 4 second mark at 3.998 and the second record was set by Doug Kalitta with a Top Fuel Dragster passing the line at 3.72 seconds.  Man, that's fast!  It's really hard to describe the feeling when these cars head down the track, your whole body shakes.  I definitely appreciate Kevin thinking of me as we got to see some really fast cars, have a nice dinner with refreshments on the house, and did get to meet a few people including Tony Schumacher as well as my other neighbor Tim and his crew.

The Taylor's Door County fishing adventure

Last but not least is news from the Taylor Family vacationing in Door County, Wisconsin.  Apparently they chartered a salmon fishing adventure and did pretty well.  Jack sent me 2 pictures, one of Ben holding the biggest fish of the trip, one he caught, a 20+ pound King Salmon.  They did not send me the final results but as you can see, the family is holding up 7 beautiful fish.  My personal opinion about this picture however is different, yes they were very successful yet check out Ben's head as apparently he's hung around Uncle David enough to finally wear something that differentiates him from the rest.  The biggest salmon and that Green Bay Packer hat, a sure sign of a true winner for sure!  Jack and his family are family to me and I appreciate them sharing their lives with me, we'll see if they will share the fish as well.  Check out their video report from Sturgeon Bay Outdoors HERE. We are approaching Labor Day and some of the busiest times of the year.  With family birthdays this weekend, out of town next weekend, my annual motorcycle trip with brother Steve the following week, back to Lac Seul starting September 5th, it's truly crazy.  The garden is ripening right on time and canning needs to be done, I make pretty good salsa, ya know!  I brought my ice house to Mankato, MN to get the bottom of the floor spray insulated before it got too cold out, which will really help keep it warm on the ice.  As my grandma Myrtle would say......Uffda!