Back in the Snow Again

Glaciers and the Driftless Area

I am trying to stay positive about the current state of the weather here in Dayton, MN but it's getting harder by the minute.  Of course with the snow piling up by the minute certainly doesn't help.  I try hard not to be too political as this is a blog about fishing yet those who know me understand I have some passionate views on things and one is Global Warming.  Now I actually believe that Global Warming is happening, in fact I am pretty sure it's been a positive for the last 10,000 years.  The last Ice Age was the Wisconsin Glaciation period when most of Minnesota and Wisconsin were covered by ice over 3000 feet thick except for an area called the Driftless Area.  My home town of Eleva, Wisconsin is in this area, often called the Coulee Region and consisted of a number of bluffs and valleys where we fished and hunted, a sportsman's paradise.  Most of the lakes in Minnesota as well as the Mississippi and Minnesota River valleys were formed during the current warming period we are in today.  If you dig down a couple of feet anywhere on my property you will run into sand and gravel deposits left from the last glaciers.  Well, if Global Warming is happening, I'd love it to move back to Minnesota for a couple of years.  Our 2013 Minnesota Fishing Opener was significantly delayed as the ice had not gone out of Leech Lake by May 11th.  This year has the feel of a repeat performance as the lakes like Mille Lacs and Leech have significant ice on them. Minnesota's fishing opener is on May 10th and I know a lot can happen in 3 weeks but I tell you, this is getting old! The forecast for Leech has night time temperatures in the low 20's until Saturday where it gets back into the 60's for highs.  We will have to keep our finger's crossed for sure as I would sure be disappointed to miss 2 fishing openers in a row because there was still ice on the lake.  As a note, I don't have any problem with some ice as one of the best ever openers for catching fish was when the Narrows Area between the main lake and Walker Bay had significant ice, enough so resorts on that side could not launch boats.  We nailed the walleyes and as well, one could literally scoop up the "ice cubes" out of the water and throw them in the cooler to keep the beer cold.  I guess you could say it was a perfect combination!

Saturday I attended the funeral of a friend, Mike Melleen of Onamia, Minnesota.  Mike was quite a fisherman on Mille Lacs Lake where I had met him at Lundeen's Tackle Castle a number of times before I really got to know him.  I guess you cannot be in Onamia without noticing the Meleen name.  A fixture in the area he originally built the Meleen's Holiday Sports (now the BP station across from Bills), Trophy's Sports Bar, and various business's in the area.  I got the chance to fish clients with Mike a few times and one of those days really sticks out in my mind. Check this post from 2012. We had fished the day before with 5 other guys, 2 in my boat and 3 in Mike's.  I had been doing really well off of Sherman's flat and decided to fish there first.  After getting a number of nice fish by 12:00 one of my guys had to leave so I brought him back to the landing.  In the meantime Mike headed north and by the time I got back on the water they were at the Blue Goose having lunch.  My guest suggested we meet them there, a nice 20 minute boat ride from the landing.  Once lunch was finished we headed straight east to a flat I had never fished before and we started hammering them.  By the end of the day we had caught over 50 fish for our guests before bringing them back to the landing.  The next morning was set to leave from Izaty's resort on the south side.  He still had the 3 people from the day before while I still had one.  We fished like crazy that morning but didn't catch a thing.  By 11:00 it was back to Izaty's for me to drop my guest off and pick up 2 more for the afternoon. They finally showed up around 1:00, invited me for lunch before we took off around 1:30.  My conversation went something like this..."Well, we fished the south end this morning and it was pretty slow.  I am confident the bite is still going on the flats, the waves aren't too bad and it would take about 30 minutes to get there".   Luckily they agreed that if we were going to fish, we had might as well catch some.  Off we headed back to Sherman's flat were we immediately started catching fish.  In the meantime, no Mike.  About an hour later he calls to tell me he's struck out so far.  Telling him we are hammering them on Sherman's, he shows up just as we pull one in.  As suddenly as he shows up he leaves, getting out of my way before returning 15 minutes later.  "Mike, anchor right here!" which his reply was that he did not want to horn in on my success.  Reminding him that we are working as a team, please anchor and I'd work around him,  really it was no problem.  Well once anchored it was like fishing wash tub as my first pass brought a "We got 3!".  The second added another 4 to that number, the third pass brought his total to 12.  We left 2 hours later with another 45+ fish caught between us.  At the dock Mike, who when it comes to fishing is as competitive as I've seen walks up and said to me "Dave, you saved my day, Thank you".  I know damn well I didn't save his day yet to receive a compliment from him was priceless and I'll always remember that time.  Later we worked together at Lundeen's while Bill and Kathy attended their daughters college graduation, it was a lot of fun hanging with Mike.  At the funeral I had learned many things about him I never knew but the most impressive was his sort of pragmatic attitude about things.  What ever hand you are dealt in life you have to play it.  I had heard him say his line "You gotta do what you gotta do" but he really lived it.  I was glad to have come to know Mike Meleen.

April 17, 2014 with 12 inches of Snow....Uffda

I was going to post this last night however when I got home it was snowing more significantly than when I originally wrote the post, enough so to take a picture of my plight!  By 8:00 this morning we had accumulated close to 12" of snow.  I quick took this picture of the end of my property where I have a road going back to the bee hives (something for next week's post).  My thought was to simply not do anything and wait till the weather melts the snow but as you see it got to be too much.  Unfortunately I removed the snow blower attachment and chains from my John Deere lawn tractor so I decided reattach it.  Luckily it's a quick hitch and only takes about 10 minutes to attach.   Thinking I could get by not putting on the tire chains on the tractor it only took 50 feet to get stuck so it was back into the shed to finish the job.  The weather forecast claims the rest of April will have above normal temperatures including 70 degrees for Easter Sunday, we'll see. The Ranger 620T is slowly starting to wake up from it's long winter's sleep.  I am enhancing my Sonic Hub audio system with a new input for my bluetooth receiver giving me more choices for my audio system.  Another project is trying to connect my Suzuki engine interface port to the Lowrance HDS12 so I can better track the engine functions and admittedly that's not going so good!  We have ordered our onion plants from Texas and here's hoping the garden will be dry enough to get in and rotor till.  Like I started the post, I hope it doesn't take too long!

The Hot Bite Continues!

A month ago my good friend Bill Lundeen asked me if I could help him out with his annual corporate event taking a number of individuals fishing for a couple days.  I thought about for a week or two and decided that nothing was more important than helping a friend out.  Bill has trusted me with his clients many times and I had helped him with this same group a few years back, how could I say no.  Knowing how to put guys on fish and being versatile whether bobbering, pulling crawlers, or lead lining, it was important that these guys had a great time and this year the catching wasn't going to be too hard.  Not being able to sleep very well the night before, I got up at 5:00 and headed north nto Lundeen's.   There I met my counter part who would be in his boat, Mike Meleen.  Mike is an icon in the Onamia area and probably as good a bobber fisherman as there is.  The trip would be worth simply working with him and learning a few tricks from the master.  Our first task was to get up to the landing just north of the Casino and be ready for our group.  Arriving around 9:00 we had our group assembled.  Brett, his daughter Tara, and Gordy would go with Mike while Jim and Bill would fish with me.  Mike has a nice 20 foot center console Lund with a 115hp Johnson 4 stroke (made by Suzuki) and can fish 4 pretty comfortably.  My Ranger fishes 3 guys comfortably so it was a perfect group.   While I headed straight for Sherman's flat, Mike checked out the deep rock areas.  With 3 in the boat we brought out the crawler rigs on a 3 way setup.  Running 1 ounce sinkers, it allows you to keep the tangles to a minimum and the crawler up off the bottom.  Within the fist hour we had 5 fish netted including this nice one Jim got.  Truth be told Jim caught most of the fish as Bill and I fish Mille Lacs quite a bit so it was fun to make him work a little!  We did some lead line
trolling and did get a few more walleyes before Jim had to get back to the landing as he was heading out.   In the meantime Mike had his group at the Blue Goose for lunch so Bill and I made a beeline for Garrison.  They were nice enough to wait for us as we got time to chow down before heading back out.  I don't fish the north end much so my strategy was to simply see where Mike was going.  A stop at Myr Mar Flat proved quite productive.  By the end of the day we had landed 21 walleyes in my boat and 26 in Mike's boat, not a bad day at all.  Here is Bill with a nice 27+ walleye that he caught in the afternoon.  Between our boats we ended up with 5 keeper walleyes and a very nice perch, something that has not been common in the last few years.

It was after 7:30 by the time we got back to Bill's, Mike took the fish home and cleaned them while I jumped in the shower to cool off.  Bill's wife Kathy had a quick supper ready, I ate, had a glass of wine and I was out like a light.  The next morning we had to be at Izaty's dock at 8:30 to meet whomever wanted to fish.   Mike got the jump on me as he was going to check out a few areas that were rumored to hold fish.  In the meantime I stopped at the gas station and filled my boat, unloaded at Cove and got 2 miles from the landing when I remembered that the leeches were still in the cooler.  Back to the landing, retrieving the bait, I pulled into the dock at 8:30 sharp.  We had the same group less Jim so I took Bill and the others stayed with Mike.  I am not much for fishing the south end this time of year however Mike is the expert.  We followed the Lund for an hour but we both struck out.  Mike headed to another deep rock pile while Bill and I went to Sloppy Joe's and lead lined again as Bill had to leave by 11:00.  We caught 1 walleye before bringing Bill back in, he left as I waited for the next group Tom and his son Jack.  After being treated to lunch at Izaty's my suggestion was we run the 10 miles back to Sherman's where I knew the fish were.  Tom and Jack were up for a boat ride so we headed north.  A quick stop at 7 Mile produced 1 fish before we went to Sherman's.  Immediately we noticed nets out as the tip was over crowded with boats.  Heading down the edge we started marking and catching walleyes on the 3 way crawler rigs.  3 hours later we had 16 fish netted with Jack doing the majority of the work.  Here Jack is with the largest of the day, 27.25 inches.  I had to laugh as we were moving down the edge, Jack's rod was in the rod holder and it was bent in half.  I yelled, Jack...Fish!  As Jack grabbed the rod his dad reminded him that he has to pay more attention to what is going on.  After netting the fish and re-baiting, we headed back down the edge passing another boat.  Almost on cue the guy in the other boat yelled that our rod was bent over.........Tom's rod.  Jack and I had a pretty good laugh as apparently it can happen to anyone.  In the meantime Mike was struggling to find fish so I suggested he come over by us and anchor.  Not one to horn in on a spot I assured Mike we would work around him.  Mike anchored up the edge where we had marked a ton of fish and literally put on a bobber fishing seminar.  Within 90 minutes they had caught over 24 walleyes on one spot.  Uffda!!!  Brett's daughter Tara did most of the work in his boat proving the younger generation can hold their own against us old guys.  When we finally stopped at 6:00 both Mike and I had netted over 92 walleyes for the two days we fished with 6 keeper walleyes for the crew.  I had a great time, made some new friends, and got one heck of a tan.  I look forward to the possibility of fishing with this group in the future.  As far as Mike, I turned him on to my Tru Turn Hook crawler rigs and gave him a handful of hooks while he shared his secret bobber jig and gave me a handful.  It was nice to be able to learn something and share something.

The recent rains up north have risen the river back to it's high point, 4 feet above the level of the previous Sunday.  It will be a few weeks before it returns to some manageable flow.   This weekend may see me back at Mille Lacs to fish with my friend Mark Applen who is staying up at his ice house.  The way things are going, I can see the bite going for the next 3 weeks or so.  Maybe I'll call my brother Steve.  Six weeks from now we will be heading to Alaska, something I am really looking forward too.  The raspberries and blueberries are ripening in the garden and the warm weather has really jump started the corn.  It's going to be a busy summer for sure.