Mid Week Adventure

My First Mille Lacs Walleye, about 16 Inches

Being retired no longer requires that all fishing trips are either on days off or weekends.  With Red Lake being such a mess this year and the Salem has been parked by the pole shed, my friend Jack Taylor suggested we try Mille Lacs on a mid week, a lot less pressure on the lake might make for a good outing.  On Wednesday we headed up to Mille Lacs with my wheel house with the intent on staying the night and coming home on Thursday.  Another friend Pete Mlinar met us at Rocky Reef Resort where we decided it was a place to get on the ice.  Ice conditions on Mille Lacs this year have been sketchy, especially with the amount of snow that has fallen.  Last weekend the ice conditions changed for the good and there were many resorts getting out to some of the more popular fishing spots.  Mille Lacs Lake is full of walleyes however the current situation hasn't improved much therefore the limit is 1 walleye and it must be between 21 and 23 inches, what remains of the great 2013 year class.  There are plenty of fish in Mille Lacs but let's not get into that!  Anyway our first stop was at the resort to get a road pass for the 24 hours we were going to be out on the ice.  We had a chance to discuss the "good" spots with their road guy, Dewey.  After talking to him a while it dawned on me that he looked awfully familiar.  "Didn't you used to run a road out of Vineland a few years back?"  Yes was the response as I reminded him of the time a number of years back when I went on his road but the heave messed up his bridge and while he was trying to fix it the ice was moving too much so Dewey, his helper, and myself stood around drinking his home made Apple Pie.  Uffda and after 1 too many I decided to stay on the safe side of the heave and fish the sunset.  He remembered that day and it was enough to secure some good information like where his shack was, what the fishing has been, and how to get there.  Once on the ice we headed straight east

Jacks second walleye

for Spirit Island and came across the first road to the left (North) which looked like it went to Indian Point, our destination.  About a mile up it dead ended by Rocky Reef so back down to the main road then we found the right road headed north and got to our spot without much fanfare.  Locating Dewey's house we set up about 50 yards from him in 27 feet of water, and area of scattered rocks on

the bottom.  In about an hour we were set up and fishing.  I was surprised how well the ice was and it was about 22 inches thick.  Mille Lacs is very clear and when we started to mark fish I put my camera down and at 10 feet I could see the bottom already.  It was definitely scattered rock and everyone was covered with zebra mussels.  The fish we were marking were small perch, a good sign as where there are small perch there are walleyes!  It wasn't until the late afternoon before we hooked a walleye, Jack had a nice fish, got it up and it went about 20 inches, just an inch shy of the minimum length.  I gave it to Jack so I could get a picture but he let it slip out of his hands and back in the hole it went.  The picture on the right is his next walleye, about 13 inches.  It was funny as he was reminded which fish was going to be put on the blog!  I hooked a nice 16 incher on my flutter spoon and got that picture.  In the end we had 6 fish, the one 20 incher, a couple of 16's and another couple 12 - 13's with a small walleye under 10.  We certainly didn't light them on fire but it was a good shot trip, enough to get away for the night and enjoy my friends.  Actually it was a perfect spot, no heaves in the ice, the road had to be 80 feet wide, the ice was solid and one never knows what will swim by these days as a couple of friends were out there last weekend and caught a few over 27.  I'd take that any day as I have plenty of walleyes in the freezer.  I am sure that there is alot of good fishing left on Mille Lacs and I am not sure if this is good news or not but even though we have about 22 inches of Ice it should be almost 3 feet by now.  Maybe ice out will be early this year, I guess time will tell.

Last spring my friend from work, Mike Scheunke  bought a wheel house and we were talking about various things to have and I showed him my generator box I had bought at Red Lake.  The box really helps to keep what little noise there is down, and in sub zero weather prevents the carburetor freeze ups and come in very handy.  He asked if he could use the box as a pattern, I said of course but you need to buy enough materials for 2 as mine is made with chipboard and it's both heavy and not very good to hold the screws for the hinges, in fact I have replaced mine this year already.  Anyway he called on Tuesday stating my box is done and he'd like to drop it off.  It is a work of art, made with strong plywood, full hinges, self closing hinges, and painted up in the perfect colors, it is absolutely perfect!  I asked what I owed and instead of money he wanted some lures and maybe a good walleye rod.  Taking one of my better rod/reel combo's off my rack, I found a tackle box then I gave him some of my best lures, seemed like I got the better of the deal however.  It is definitely a work of art and certainly one can see the care he put into making this!  Thanks Mike.  Went to the boat show last week and didn't get a single answer to a few questions I have with my Minnkota Charger, Lowrance/Evinrude NEMA 2000 communications however the big Sportshow is coming in the first of April and I will definitely have time to get some real discussions going as I should be working Frankie's booth the entire show.  What does the future look like, well maybe another trip to Mille Lacs, maybe back to Lake of the Woods in March, chasing some crappies with Bill Lundeen.  Winter is far from over!

BTW tomorrow I officially join the old man group as on February 1st I begin Medicare.........damn where did the time go?

The 29th Annual Kramer Open

Wild Marsh Sporting Clays Course.

Saturday was the 29th Annual Kramer Open hosted by a good friend, Dave Kramer.  Dave originally started the Kramer Open as a means to raise money for the family of a good friend who passed away, Doug Leu.  Dave has done this now for 29 years and over that time Doug's wife had passed away leaving their children.  My involvement began a number of years ago when my great and late friend, Tom Emmons invited me to shoot the Kramer.  Although a lot of the players have changed over the years, it is still fun to get out on the first Saturday after Labor Day and shoot 100 birds at Wild Marsh Sporting Clays, I used to shoot a league there a number of years ago and it was a lot of fun.  It was a 500 bird league with the requirement to shoot 100 birds a month for April, May, June, July, and August.  You could basically shoot it anytime within the designated time for the month so there was zero pressure to show up every week and shoot, which was nice.  Of course time always flies by quickly and it would seem as though we would barely get in our 100 birds before the next month started.  The Kramer is alot of fun as I do not shoot a sporting clays league there anymore however I really enjoy the shooting and the challenges of hitting the clay targets in the configurations that they set up.  Usually the courses are set up like a golf course.  At the Wild Marsh they have the Green Course, Blue Course and Red Course.  In previous shoots there would be 9 stations per course, 50 targets sort of like a golf course.  This year's setup was 16 stations on the Green Course, 14 with 6 targets and 2 with 8 to make a total of 100.  It certainly made for a fast course completion as the stations were fairly close together, I think it only took about 3.5 hours, about an hour faster than usual.  So out of 41 guys I finished in 7th place with 82 out of 100 targets hit, right behind my friend and co-worker, Mike Scheunke, who was on my team along with Lory Brasel and 2 new guys, Tim and Dan.  Mike shoots quite often in a league and hit 3 more than myself with a score of 85.  These are not bad scores at all considering how rusty one gets after a year of not shooting.  Anyway it was fun and afterwards we all gathered at Dave's house for some refreshments, a Taco dinner, and the infamous Junk auction where Dave raises money for the Leu family.  All in good fun, I bought some obscure garden tools for $1.00 and did donate some extra funds to get a set of seven In-Fisherman how to DVD's a pretty nice set and will come in handy for ice fishing entertainment.  Dave had a nice new in the box Browning A-Bolt .308 rifle on the auction but they did not call my number on that one, which was OK.  All in All it was a fun time, something that I look forward to every year as it is always on the weekend after Labor Day.  Not that I need any excuse but it also serves as a great memory of my times with my late friend Tom Emmons.

New Power Center Distribution Terminals

Last week I had updated my progress on rewiring the boat to fix a number of electrical issues I have been seeing when I fish Canada.  One of the things that is probably causing my issues could be low voltage at the docks where I plug in at night, preventing the batteries from fully charging overnight.  This has an accumulative effect as the batteries are not at their peak of charge and performance.  There are 2 things that I have done.  First is to significantly beef up the electrical circuits that feed the console power.  Although I am not sure what the original configurations were, I bypassed it and as stated last week, ran #6 ga from the batteries in the floor to the console.  This is more than enough to assure good power to my electronics.  I finally received the terminal blocks and mounted them where my electronics hookup area is and started from there.  In the past I had discussed using a boost circuit to help however when I reconfigured it, the circuit kept blowing the automatic circuit breakers that are standard with my Ranger.  For sure I could run the converter straight off the battery via the distribution terminal without issues so I put a 20 Amp fuse in line for protection and reconfigured all of my power connections so all of my add on electronics such as the Lowrance HDS Carbons, SonicHub 2, Structure Scan 3D and other electronics would now have a boost voltage of 14.6VDC assuring trouble free operation.  In addition I replaced my USB power socket with a new one that has a red LED voltage readout on it (much easier to see in the sunlight than my previous blue LED) then tied it directly to the distribution terminals.  Now I can monitor the battery voltage from the console, it is pretty slick.  One of the other things is building a boost transformer for the low dock voltage in Canada.  At the Fisherman's Cove where I was last month the voltage at the end of my extension cord was 92VAC.  I suspect that it may be similar at the Lac Seul Outposts, where I am going on Monday.  If so maybe I can fix the problem from both ends, increase the dock voltage that powers my on board battery chargers to assure a full charge over night, and fix the internal power inside the boat so if there is an issue, it is minor.  Time will tell!  Either way I am fishing next Monday through Friday so my next post could be a week late. Hopefully it will be worth it.