Long Lake In Wisconsin and Lac Seul, part 2 (that should be enough!)

George with a nice walleye

So while the boat was still wet from Lac Seul, I had the chance to fish with a couple of my favorite people, Andrew Rombalski, my wife's uncle, Jason Rombalski, her cousin, and George Wimmer, their in law and a friend of mine.  Jason's wife's parents have a cabin on the channel between Birch Lake and Lake Chetac, in Birchwood, Wisconsin, just Northeast of Rice Lake, Wisconsin.  We usually try and get a fall trip in each year looking for some nice crappies or a walleye or two.  Just west of them is Long Lake, a larger lake in the area known for it's walleyes.  Because of previous commitments the plan was to join them at the landing on Long Lake around 3 in the afternoon on Saturday, fish for the day, then stop and have supper at a Supper Club on the lake.  Wisconsin is famous for their rural or lakeside restaurants that are referred to as Supper Clubs.  Dinner in Wisconsin was always at noon!  We had fished that lake a few time however the forecast of the rain stopping by noon did not materialize and at 3 it was still drizzling.  We launched anyway and headed south to a few areas that we had been before.  While looking at the lake map on my preloaded maps on the Lowrance HDS, there was a spot marked:  Fall walleyes can be found along the drop off fishing with live bait rigs or jigs and minnows.  It wasn't that far away and with such an understanding audience in the boat we approached the region where I began marking fish immediately.  With the Motorguide in deployed and in anchor mode we started jogging around the area looking for fish.  Once on a pod of fish Jason pulled out a #7 Jigging Rap, a popular ice fishing bait however it is becoming popular using the lure as an open water jig and within 2 minutes he had a nice 16 inch walleye, however with the minimum length of 18 back in the water it went without even getting a picture!  All of a sudden we were on the fish as George catches a nice 17 incher.  I did get him to pose for this nice example of how our late afternoon was going.  In less than 2 hours we landed 10 walleyes and a nice 16 inch smallie that took my Jigging Rap. It was a significant improvement

Andy's nice 19 inch Smallie

over the last couple of times we fished Long Lake so it was decided that on Sunday we would hope to repeat the same as Saturday.  It really didn't stop raining till we left as we stopped by the Reel Em Inn Supper Club on the west side of the lake, just down from the boat landing.  There we enjoyed a few cocktails and ordered the Saturday night special, a 16 ounce prime rib with all the fixings.  It was very relaxing with the locals enjoying supper and us 4 patting ourselves on the back for having a quite successful couple of hours of fishing.  George went back to his cabin in Chetek, Wisconsin to attend to his dogs while the rest of us heading back to Jason's in laws house on the lake.  After a couple of glasses of fine whiskey, including a nice 21 year old scotch, we got up in the morning to have breakfast and head back out again.  Not knowing if George would rejoin us that question was answered the minute we pulled in the landing, yes he was there!  Of course we headed back to the scene of yesterdays success however the sky's turn a beautiful blue as the front went by a few hours earlier.  Not that we minded but you know what happens right after a cold front moves through.  Well it still wasn't that bad of fishing as we did get a couple of walleyes and Andy landed this very nice 19 inch smallmouth fishing a small sucker minnow.  We were marking a school of suspended crappies on the screen but wasn't very successful to see exactly what was stacked up in 25 feet of water (It was crappies, I know it!).  Never the less we did get a few more hits then decided to look for other identical looking area on the lake to expand our outlook on fish location.  We we should have just stayed were we were!  Never the less it was nice to fish with these guys and I hope that we may be able to get out ice fishing on that lake this year.

Jerry and his giant 16 inch walleye!

So finishing up the Lac Seul trip was pretty exciting.  Our favorite spot on the lake was Craig's Corner, named after a friend, Craig Biegert who fished with us a few years back. Sort of a nice place close to camp that always seems to have fish on it, it is now our go to spot if we need to fill out for the day, or for the trip if needed.  With 4 guys in the boat including Barry, Jerry, Ricky and myself, it was a good place to stay organized and catch fish.  Jerry had a 500 series spinning reel on a nice St. Croix Avid, sort of like walking around in a tuxedo with old dirty tennis shoes on!  At least it was something to give him some harmless ribbing.  Jerry did get some nice fish and I did get some pictures but not before correcting him on the proper way to display a fish for the camera.  Of course his response was...Do you think I am stupid?...Well here.  So this is a nice 16 inch walleye that is presented in the correct way for a photograph and he does deserve some credit.  The hand hidden to take away any reference for size, hide you arm holing the fish with the fish, and stick it out as far as you can.  Of course this fish looks a lot bigger than it is, in fact Jerry looks puny compared to this gigantic fish!  Never the less it is a great example of the fun we had in my boat with these 3 guys. Looking back we didn't kill them but our daily catch was acceptable with 60 - 70 walleyes a day in the boat.  My biggest mistake was to try and teach them how to tie a improved clinch knot ti tie the jigs onto the line.  Making it look super easy it resulted in me tying most of their jigs onto their lines, I guess it's nice to be thought of as useful.  All in all it was a great trip, having fun with my friends from Eleva including my brother Steve, and friends Kevin and Paul.  It was also nice to be able to show Jerry and Ricky a good time as this was their first time to Lac Seul.  We are already discussing next year!

With snow in the forecast it's probably time to put the boat away for the winter as my wheel house is scheduled to get the roof and door leak fixed as well as some electrical issues.  Hopefully next week will find myself with Bill Lundeen fishing our secret trout lake!  He sent me a picture of a dandy he got a couple of days ago.

Fishing the Walleye Capital of Wisconsin

First Walleye, 13.5 incher

Last weekend was spent with my wife's uncle Andrew and his son Jason fishing the area near Birchwood, Wisconsin, just northeast of Rice Lake.  Our plan was to fish Long Lake first on Saturday then hit the lake the cabin was on Sunday.  Long Lake claims to be the Walleye Capital of Wisconsin, near Birchwood and a dubious honor so we were excited to try it out.  I decided to pull my boat over there, I figured it would be more comfortable for 3 of us as well, I have the electronics which would enable us to search the underwater haunts better, as well if there were crappies around, maybe we could reenact our success from last Wednesday, looking for suspended crappies over the deeper basins.  Admittedly I am used to lakes like Mille Lacs or Leech that have specific structures and known walleye haunts where it isn't too difficult to locate them however Long Lake is a large 3000 acre lake and the reports are that the walleyes can be found along the steep deep dropoffs.  Sure, the whole frickin lake is one steep dropoff! Well we looked for underwater points next to a steep dropoff, there were plenty of them.  We decided it would be easier to simply vertical jig them with rainbows as we could stay connected with the bottom better with less tangles.  After about 2 hours of nothing we headed towards and sunken island that had a 25 foot point/flat area that went into deep water.  We were marking fish on the depthfinder however it was a different story to get them to hit.  Using the trolling motor and the anchor function we would simply find and area then I would move the boat in 10 to 15 foot increments, working the point very slowly.  I had just put my line down when I felt a faint thump on the jig.  I feed it line and waited to feel for the telltale tap tap, then set the hook.  After a few hours of nothing, it felt pretty good and I just had the feeling it was a walleye.  Sure enough it was, 13.5 inches long.  Long Lake has a 15 inch minimum so back it went, it was nice to catch something however it took a long time to connect to a fish.  We worked that area pretty good as walleyes tend to be schooling fish, especially of this size yet nothing was hitting.  Time to move again.

Jason's 19 inch keeper Walleye

We headed up the east arm of the lake by the Boy Scout Camp.   Basically we simply fished along the drop off along the shoreline but all we did was waste more time.  Our next stop was a point off the southeast side, it was a nice flat area and we were marking quite a few fish so we slowly meandered around the area.  There was a guy fishing just south of us who was getting fish, it appeared to be crappies. We drove around him and it looked like he was anchored just on the weed edge where it started to drop to the 25 foot level. There wasn't much so we left him alone and continued to fish the area.  All of a sudden Jason was reeling in a nice fish.  I grabbed the net and voila, we landed our first keeper walleye, a 19 inch beauty.  It hit his jig pretty hard which is a good indication that maybe the bite was on.  Also the area was perfect for fall walleyes (In my mind), 25 foot deep, some scattered weeds, I figured we would maybe get a few. Unfortunately we only managed to drowned a few minnows as the bite certainly did not materialize as we had planned as the only other fish we caught was a 20 inch northern pike that I reeled in. After saturating the area for another hour we decided it was time to move again and went back up between an island were we had marked a lot of suspended fish, maybe this late in the day we could hit some crappies.  Unfortunately that didn't happen either as I caught another 13.5 inch walleye and Jason nailed a real nice 3.5 pound smallmouth bass, definitely and nice fish but not what we were looking for.  So much for the Walleye Capital of Wisconsin.   One of my goals was to use the winterizing function on my outboard as I wasn't sure I'd be getting the boat out again this season.  While on the trailer and still in the lake at the landing the control screen has a winterizing function, you just push the touch screen and it is programed to speed up the idle then inject extra oil in the cylinders to fog them, pretty slick and only takes about 2 minutes.  We ended the day with 1 keeper walleye which according to my friends who have fished this lake, was pretty good.  We headed back to Jason's in law's cabin before driving to Makini for supper.  I was surprised, they had a pretty good wine list at a reasonable price so we had a bottle of Rombauer Zinfandel along with Prime Rib.  To be honest the Prime Rib wasn't very good as I suspect it was Friday's Prime Rib reheated as it was quite dry and tough.  Oh well, we were hungry and decided it was good enough to eat so we finished up and headed back to the cabin to watch the Cubs win their game to go to the World Series.  It was a long day and we decided to hit the sack early, which seems like my MO these days.

Andy finally got a Walleye

While Saturday was about as picture perfect as one can get with temperatures in the low 70's and no wind, we woke up to a different story on Sunday with cool temps and the wind coming in from the northwest.  The plan was to winterize Jason's brother-in-law's boat, take the cover off the boat lift, take their boat out and do some fishing, then load it up on the trailer and put it away in the garage for the winter.  The first task was to head into Birchwood and have breakfast.  I love these small town restaurants as the breakfasts are usually very good and cheap.  This was no exception for I had coffee and a Mexican omelet for less than $8.00 and it was delicious.  After breakfast we headed to the hardware store to buy a outboard flushing muffs and picked up a battery tender.  The next task was challenging at best as the garage door was 9 feet and the boat must have been 8 feet 11 inches wide. We eventually got it out, added the gas conditioner, shook the boat somewhat to mix it in and did the usual stuff to winterize it.  Getting it back in the garage was the worst challenge but with a little ingenuity we managed.  Next we went out on Big Chetac Lake, supposed to be a great crappie lake with the occasional walleye to be had.  We tried our strategy from last week looking for suspended fish however the depth finder was not very good and the wind really put a damper on things as none of us were dressed for the conditions on the lake.  We decided it would be easier and warmer to tuck behind an island and fish the deep weedline, which we did with limited success.  Andy finally got a walleye, another 13.5 inches, to small to keep but at least he did catch something!  On Big Chetac the minimum size is 18 inches so we threw it back.  Another 45 minutes and we decided it was too cold to fish comfortably so we headed back to the cabin, just in time to watch the Minnesota Vikings lose to the Eagles, I guess our day was complete!!!  Loading the boat up and putting it away for the winter we cleaned up everything, locked it up, said goodbye to Andy and headed toward Cumberland.  About 10 miles from the cabin Jason figured out we forgot his walleye in the fridge.  It was worth driving back and according to the website, Louies Meats in Cumberland was open till 6:00 so we had plenty of time to stop as our goal was to pick up their world famous Packer Brats, bratwurst with cheese and sauerkraut mixed in, they are fabulous.  Unfortunately their website was wrong and were closed at 4:00, we would have never made it anyway.  Oh well, seems like a good excuse for another road trip. We got my boat in the pole shed about 7:00, 2 1/2 hours, not a bad drive.  It was fun being with Jason and his dad Andy and I promised them an ice fishing trip to Red this year, stating that the walleye fishing will be much better!

I have just finished the final arrangements for our annual TTA meeting which is going to be held in Naples Florida this fall.  It's always the first Thursday/Friday after Thanksgiving and this year a bunch of us guys are planning on staying over the weekend and going grouper fishing, something I have never done.  Last time it was in Florida they went out without me, caught a lot of fish, brought them to a restaurant which cooked them and had a great time.  I am really looking forward to this as I am staying with a friend who has a beach house in Naples, it should be fun.  Deer Hunting time is in a 1 1/2 weeks so this week I will go put my stand up with my friend Jack and his son Ben on Saturday then on Sunday we will drive home for my niece's daughters confirmation and check on Mom.  It's getting colder as last Saturday it was in the 70's which is probably the last we'll see of that temperature till April.  Oh well, hopefully making ice soon!