February 28th, it's here already!

Sunset on Lake of the Woods

 February 28th marks one of the more interesting days of my fishing past.  In  the state of Minnesota all permanent ice houses located south of Highway 2 (which runs from Duluth to East Grand Forks) must be off the lake, period.  My CRS does not allow me the exact year however it was probably in the late 1970's or early 1980's.  My good friend Mark Taylor introduced me to his brother-in-law Tim Guzek.  He had introduced us to fishing Lake John, just west of Annandale.  I would say that it was my go to lake for many years.  Well one year Mark, Tim, Mark's brother Jack, and I decided that we would build a relatively inexpensive "permanent" ice fishing house out of simple chip board, it was pretty simple.  We all pooled our money and bought 12 pcs of 4' x 8' x 1/2 inch panels plus a few 2 x 4's and 2 x 2's for strength and build a crude but effective fish house. I don't remember who got the small barrel stove for heating it with wood but either way we were in ice fish heaven at the time, as there were no portables at the time.  We had somehow befriended a home owner on the lake who let us access the lake through his land which was very nice as our fish house was straight off his shore.  That year we had a ton of snow.  Not being smart enough to lift the house up out of the slush, it was around February 14, just 2 weeks before we needed to remove the house from the lake, when we decided to start getting ready for this event.  The rumors of what would happen if you didn't get the house off the ice ranged from revoking your fishing license to huge fines that young guys like us couldn't pay, even prison sentencing!  Upon arriving at the fish house to our horror, the entire floor had about 4 inches of ice on top of it and was frozen solid.  Now what.  Well it didn't take too long before 4 of us had the perfect solution,  went into town and bought 2 bags of water softener salt pellets.   We dumped both bags on the floor and spread them evenly thinking that the salt would eventually melt the ice and free the ice house from the lake's grip.  Of course it needed time to work so we left, coming back on the 28th to see where we were.  Opening the door we were pleasantly surprised that the ice was completely gone from the top of the floor.  this was going to be a piece of cake!  Well after chipping ice for an hour it was apparent that the ice had gripped the bottom of the floor and wasn't going to yield to our wishes.  There were a few guys in our situation, trying to get their houses off, when one walked up to us, took a look and said that he could set our house free.....just go into town and buy a box of 30-06 shells.  While we continued to chip away one of us went into town and bought the shells.  Upon returning the guy had his hunting rifle in hand as we gave him the shells.  I don't even remember if he had hearing protection, never the less went inside and proceeded to shoot the bullets through the floor, all 20 of them.  Came out and said "There you go, good luck".  The purpose made sense, the bullets would hit the ice and shatter it causing it to release it's grip on our house.  Unfortunately it didn't work as planned and with only a few hours of light left we decided to simply take apart the house piece by piece.  Having an old snowmobile trailer we piled the pieces on the trailer as we disassembled it.  At last all we had was the stuck floor.  Using ice chisels and pry bars we finally got the floor off the ice however it was not recognizable after our efforts.  Ready to go we secured our now defunct ice house, stopping in Monticello where a friend had a house an 5 acres of field, he let us drop it off as none of use really had a place to put the pile of wood.  That was our last effort in having a permanent ice house as flip over portables became readily available.  It still was pretty funny as this date brings back those struggles as young and inexperienced guys often have.  Thanks Mark, Jack, and Tim for the memories! My first picture is sunset on Lake of the Woods from 2 weeks ago.  It had to be -25F however the moon and the colors were simply stunning!

Jared's Trophy Hogfish

So the plan was to go to Lake of the Woods this weekend but a few calls about the current bite status and I decided to wait till March 12th.  Mistakenly assumed that Ben Aiona would be back from Florida by now but I was off a week and he is still there absorbing the last of the beautiful sunshine.  Ben will be back in time for our mid March trip, assuming he needs to pull his shack home, as well my wheel house.  In our talks about Florida, the idea of going out on a charter was discussed.  Ben, his wife Heather, and son Jared were scheduled for earlier this week however the weather proved to force them to move it on Friday.  I was really excited to see how Jared did as he is one dedicated fisherman!  Well to my surprise I received a number of pictures of the trip including this one of the nice Hogfish he caught.  I can just imagine the craziness on the boat when he pull this fish in sight.  Pictures say a thousand words but in this case and knowing Jared, it doesn't even come close, and the picture says a lot!!!  Apparently the captain claims this is a pretty nice sized trophy hogfish, telling Ben he should get a graphite reproduction!  In another picture Jared pulled up an octopus that he hooked.  I just can't imagine!  It looks like they got a few nice grouper, some small snappers and a number of rockfish type fish that sometimes you just never know what you'll catch.  Like a lot of gulf charters I have been on they were out 30 miles and it's still relatively shallow.  It appears to be a nice day and the waves look tame enough, it makes me want to fly down.  Anyway I am looking forward to our next trip and discussing this adventure.  Ben is planning on going to Lake Erie at the end of April and has invited us with.  It's a dream trip for me and at this time am planning to go.  We are now about 10 1/2 weeks from Fishing Opener, I am already starting to get ready.   More on that next week!

Quick Trip to Lake John

Satellite view of Lake John

Lake John is a small lake just west of Annandale, MN.  In the past 40 years it's been one of my favorite lakes to just go fishing for the afternoon.  Mark Taylor's brother in law, Tim Guzek introduced us to the lake back in the early 1980's, apparently he had a connection somewhere.  It's always been a good panfish and largemouth bass lake, they even stock walleyes however one has never graced the end of my hook.  The lake runs north and south with a long narrow bay extending from the northwest corner.  The water is fairly clear but has a lot of weeds in it these days.  Back in the mid 80's we made a cheap plywood fishing shack and pulled it out to the lake on a snowmobile trailer.  With a small wood stove it was pretty nice for a bunch of guys who couldn't afford much.  We'd light a fire then fish the evening bite with crappies our main target, and we'd always come home with a few.  In this part of Minnesota one has to have your ice shack off the lake by February 28th.   This was our second year of having the shack and not being too smart, there was a lot of snow on the ice which pushed the ice down.  The last time we fished after re-drilling the holes, the water came up over the floor by about 4 inches and subsequently froze.  Having come out the week before we had to have it off the ice to start the process of removing it, there was no way with 4 inches of frozen ice over the floor.  It was a plain untreated floor as well so the ice was very much adhered to wood.  Plan B.....go into town and get a 40# bag of water softener salt.  Returning we spread the entire bag across the floor and headed home to come out the following weekend to finish the job.  Upon returning we were pleasantly surprised the salt did exactly what we predicted, the floor was bare, not a bit of ice was on it.  The next job was to lift the house off the ice and load it on our trailer.  In our arsenal was a couple of long ice chisels as well as pry bars but to no avail, the bottom of the house was froze to the surface yet.  It was critical that we have it removed that weekend as the DNR fine was pretty hefty.  A guy walked by with a hunting rifle and suggested he could remove the house, simply shoot through the floor and the impact would crack the ice and all would be good.  Back into town to get a box of 30-06 shells.  Returning he began to shoot the bullets through the floor, all 20 of them.  It was pretty loud but seemed like a good idea as on the edges you could see the ice shatter.  With all 20 shells shot into the floor we again tried to pry the house off the ice but it still held tight.  With daylight fading fast, we decided it just wasn't worth messing with anymore and tore the shack apart, wall by wall.  We did get the floor detached from the 2 x 4's that were stuck in the ice and pried what 2 x 4's we could but I an sure we left a few reminders of our presence there, of course it was a good spot so those left over boards would be perfect for marking our spot for next year!  Our fish shack was now on layers stacked on the snowmobile trailer, we headed up the road and stopped at a friends house, he had a couple of acres.  He let us unload the heap of wood which eventually he ended up burning.  Portable shacks were just coming into play so that ended our adventure into what turned out to be our permanent ice fishing shack.  

HDS 12 Live

My neighbor Tom Olson asked me to go with him in his boat which was nice as I  didn't have to do anything.  We did catch a few bass on a wacky worm set up which was one of the original intents for going to Lake John, try for some bass.  Unfortunately it was quite windy, coming out of the west as 15 - 20 mph.  our plan was to fish the edges of the long east to west bay where the wind would push us along the shore.  Within 5 minutes there was a small bass on my line.  Maybe 13 inches, not enough to take a picture.  A few more were caught before Tom caught this really funky looking bass.  He threw it back before I had time to snap a picture so no proof of our limited success.  Drifting the north side and casting for crappies, one finally hit my jig, maybe 9 inches, good enough to keep but it would be hard to work that area well so it went back.  It was just too windy to fish comfortably so we headed back to the landing.  It was still nice to fish a lake that I had not been to since 2015. 

Last fall I traded with Bill my HDS 12 Carbon for his HDS 12 Live, a newer unit.  It has some interesting features you can use like Live Sight for looking forward for fish.  Garmin has really set the industry ablaze with it's Panoptics system which people rave about for ice fishing.  Lowrance has some catching up to do however if and when they do I will be ready.  It's still a process to get everything changed over and working as their a little changes done every time they change models as well they have software upgrades to fix issues that were missed.  It's an easy process, simply download the update to your computer then transfer it to a miniSD card, insert the card and through the menu system find the upgrade then install it.  Admittedly it's nice to have everything talking to each other and working but sometimes it would just be nice not having to worry about it, like the good old days!  Oh well.  Yesterday Bruce Wiley flew me to Siren, Wisconsin's Burnett County Airport.  There we filled the plane up with their cheaper 100 octane low lead airplane fuel, punched to code in for the main airport building where we signed out the courtesy car and headed to Burnett County Coop to have lunch, buy some of their delicious cheese, and pick up some spotted cow beer for the neighbors.  That is always a fun couple of hours for sure. This new format is going to be the death of me!!!!!!

Superbowl Weekend, Winter's Half Over

 Mark's feisty northern

With my neighbor Tim's annual Superbowl Party on Sunday along with snow predicted, I decided to head out on Saturday to retry Pelican Lake near my home.  My last trip was somewhat uneventful although I did catch a meal of sunfish that my buddy Kevin calls Hatta's...........Hatta keep'em, Hatta throw them back.  This time I decided to fish the east basin which has the largest expanse of 12 foot water and is seldom fished.   While plowing snow Saturday morning with my tractor, my friend Mark Applen drove up to check out what was going on and 5 minutes later he agreed to tag along to see if we could get some crappies.  Hoping the afternoon would warm up somewhat, we took our shelters while thinking maybe could get by without them.  A quick stop at the hardware store in St. Michael and we were off to the east side of the lake driving on where the lake meets the road.  With the ice over 22 inches thick we could drive wherever we wanted.  A tip from the guy who gave us the minnows gave us our starting point along the south shoreline in 12 feet of water.  I drilled about 10 holes, 30 feet apart, in a straight line towards shore with the last hole in 8 feet.  This is a great strategy to try different depths to determine where the fish might be.  Mark caught this 2 foot northern and other than a 4 inch sunfish I caught, that was about it for our first spot.  I did mark a few on my Vexilar but nothing that would cooperate.  Suggesting a move, we headed west towards a group of houses before veering towards a spot that looked promising.  Fishing till dark we only caught 3 crappies that would have been better served as bait for a tipup.  I suspect that with the water as cloudy as it is this year, the weedline might be less than 10 feet causing the fish to be shallower than in the past years.  Because it's so close and there have been a few good reports, it might just be a matter of time.

Hunting for mice

While heading to my pole shed to get the tractor ready for plowing there was a beautiful red fox hunting mice in the field behind the house.  He must have been hungry as I was simply a minor distraction for him.  It was fun to watch as the fox would listen, watch, then finally take a leap with all fours off the ground coming down on dinner.  He did get a mouse before deciding that having someone watch him hunt was a violation of his privacy.  Heading towards the neighbors, I snapped this picture as he started his trot east.  His coat was thick and full and looked good.   It's pretty neat to have them around although they do have a fairly strong odor that I could sense from my car.   The other advantage is they tend to keep the population of rabbits in check as they were getting way out of hand.   Checking my previous posts on my fox sightings they seem to start around the first week in February as I have made mention a couple of my sighting in both 2010 and 2011.  I wonder if this is the same guy?  Along with coyotes, deer, raccoons, and muskrats, the back yard is pretty tame as I don't have to deal with 1000 pound brown bears as my friends in Alaska do!

With a Saturday temperature predicted to be 35 and my neighbor Pete hinting he'd like to get out, I think we're going to try a couple of lakes I haven't fished in a while, maybe Lake John, west of Annandale, MN.  In the late 1980's my friends Mark and Jack Taylor had a crude ice house on Lake John.  We did pretty well however late in the year the heavy snows had caused water to flood the floor with a depth of 4 inches.  Having to remove off the ice by February 28th we filled the inside with rock salt.  The following week the water had disappear yet it was still frozen into the lake.  A guy came by offering the solution to our problems and after following his instructions to go into town and buy a box of 30-06 shells, he proceeded to shoot the whole box of bullets through the floor and into the ice.  The theory was that the slugs would hit the ice and fracture it enough to loosen the lake's grip on the bottom of our ice shack.  I thought the guy was crazy but what the heck.  It didn't work and we were left with simply tearing it apart for firewood, never to see the ice again.  Although a pain, it was fun fishing in our own special castle.

An Evening on Lake John

Lake John is a small L shaped body of water just west of Annandale MN.  I was introduced to the lake over 30 years ago by Tim Guzek, a good friend of mine.  At the time our quarry was northerns fished with a bobber and medium sucker minnows.  After a successful day of catching pike and crappies, the lake became on of my favorites.  Over the years there has been many successful trip  bagging mostly crappies and sunfish along with the occasional northern and largemouth bass.   It was such a good lake that one year we decided to put a permanent ice house on the ice.  Fishing was great  and we had a wonderful time.  That year was exceptional and the snow piled deep on the lake.  Our house was not very sturdy and built on a simple 2 x 4 frame.   It got to the point where the weight on the ice was heavy enough to cause the water to gush up through the holes drilled in the floor.  Towards the end there was about 3 inches of solid ice covering the entire inside of the house.  In Minnesota one needs to remove their ice houses by March 1st.  The house was definitely stuck to the ice.  Our first strategy was to pour rock salt on the ice covering the floor in hopes to melt it away.  That actually worked pretty good as we came back the next day and the ice was gone, melted and drained away.  Hoping that it did the same for the ice below the floor, no such luck, it was still frozen solid to the lake.  As we were chipping away a young man came by and asked if we wanted some help and claimed he could get it free.  You just need to buy me a box of 30-06 shells and he would take care of it!  Chipping in we bought the shells and returned to the lake where he proceeded to shoot rounds through the floor claiming the bullets would shatter the ice and voila.  Well 20 rounds later and severe ringing in our ears proved unsuccessful.  We ended up tearing the house down side by side and dismantled the floor.  Totally ruined but off the ice, that ended our experiment with permanent ice houses.

Today I still enjoy a yearly trip to Lake John, hoping for some nice crappies and sunfish.  Last Sunday night my neighbor Lory Brasel and I did just that.   Lory was interested in getting some northerns as I was looking for anything that bit.  Although we did not slay the fish, we did accomplish our goals.  Taking his lund it was nice to have someone else take the controls.  Lory got a couple of small northerns as this one he is holding while I nailed a few crappies, sunfish, a number of small bass and a larger one which I am holding.  Nothing too large it was nice to get out for a few hours.  It was a peaceful way to spend last Saturday night. I will have a report on my annual trip to Mille Lacs with Mr. Teasley in a few days.