2019 in Review

Cold day on the lake

Last Sunday the 2019 walleye fishing season is officially closed in Minnesota except for the border waters of the Mississippi River as well as Lake of the Woods.  A this time the Mississippi River stays open season all year however the Rainy River and Lake of the Woods will close in early April.  Minnesota's 2020 fishing opener is Saturday, May 9th and Ontario's walleye opener is the following Saturday, May 16th which starts the whole process again. 2019 certainly wasn't may most productive walleye season but who's complaining.  These days I seem to spend more time fishing Ontario than Minnesota as last summer included 3 days on opener fishing Leech Lake and 1 day fishing on Mille Lacs Lake.  It certainly didn't help that my boat was in the shop for over 9 weeks getting repaired from hitting the reef on Lac Seul, sounds like a good excuse huh!  It was also a pathetic year for ice fishing walleyes as there were 3 days at Red Lake, 3 days on Lake of the Woods and 1 day on Mille Lacs. Meanwhile I fished 10 days on Lac Seul this year, not a record however it can be looked at as fishing 1 day a week for 10 weeks on Mille Lacs, sounds reasonable doesn't it!  I did fish 4 days of largemouth bass in the Alexandria area as well about 4 trips on the Mississippi River behind the house in my jon boat, when you add it all up it comes to about a fishing trip every 12 days or so.  I guess that makes it sound better and I am not getting any younger.  Of course a day fishing in Naples l at the dealer getting a number of little things taken care of and hopefully it will be ready this week as it's been there since the first of December and I'm getting a little anxious about storage, the batteries, and other stuff.  I did go help my  friend Bill Lundeen this Monday as he had a large corporate group out ice fishing and we scouted some areas.  A large heave developed a few miles out from the landing and prevented us from getting to some of the better areas but according to Bill it went alright.  The first picture is one of my favorites from 2019.  We were on Red Lake last January 27th and a rattle reel went off early in the morning.  Getting up and catching the fish I wondered what time it was as it was still pretty dark.  The clock said 4:20 AM but it seemed cold and no wonder, it was -28.5 outside the ice house.  Certainly this winter has had it's days below zero but nothing like last winter.  I leave it at that!

Record crowd at the Perch Extravaganza

Last Saturday was the annual Johnson Portside Perch Extravaganza.  Usually a few of us get together and pull our wheel houses up to Mille Lacs, park them together and spend the weekend.  The Perch Extravaganza at Hunter's Point Resort is based on a perch fishing contest with the largest perch getting $500 however there are so few perch in the lake anymore, it has really morphed into a huge button drawing, you buy a button with a number and if they draw it you could win quite a number of good prizes including new ATV's, Generators's, coolers stuffed with fishing gear, and this year they had 3 new wheel houses.  The weather was fabulous and because of the cancellation of a few event's around the area, there were thousands of people attending.  Rumor has it they sold over 16,000 tickets so one's chances of winning were slim this year.  Never the less the anticipation is fun and as they say, you'll never win if you don't enter!  Also our group was worried about the ice conditions on Mille Lacs as the early snow and slush put a damper on things as the first year I attended we were flooded. Mark Applen has a small place just south of Hunter's and I met him there about 8:30.  We headed to Malmo to have breakfast then gathered our gear and headed out onto the lake.  I was surprised that one could dang near drive where ever you wanted, as well the ice was at least 30  inches thick.  We had never seen so many wheel houses on the lake, we estimated around 8000 houses.  It was a zoo as every piece of structure had a number of houses parked on top, literally there was few places to fish.  We did fish for a couple of hours, attended the drawing and headed back home.

One of the fishing shows I like is In Depth Outdoors as they have a new show every week.  A few weeks ago they were fishing in Pool 2 on the Mississippi River, just south of St. Paul. It is prompting me to get the jon boat ready as I remember fishing that area in the late winter with my friend Pete. It certainly might be worth a try. 

Catching up

Friday night's cold sunset.

It's been a whirlwind of activity in my world lately, some of it is simply getting caught up after the holiday's, some of it is business related, and some of it is just that I am running out of time.  Oh well we did get some fishing in.......barely, however it turned out.  2 weeks ago it was Sister Rosemary's Christmas party in Arcadia, Wisconsin, an event that is difficult to miss.  Not that I would not rather be fishing however those family events are important as well and I got to see some of the people I don't see very often.  As well, with both of my parents now gone, the incentive to drive back home isn't as strong as it once was, so it was nice.  Besides my wife's uncle Bernie gave us some venison trimmings for the bologna we are going to make one of these days! As I said work has been crazy but I still got a chance to get out on Friday and head to Red Lake and JR's.  The gang, Mark, Russ, and myself were destined to fish this last weekend however Russ had something going on and so did Mark up to the day we were to go and called me saying, he's open, let's go.  Needing to get away I agreed as we headed out on Friday morning to Red.  We got to the Resort, paid our dues and headed out towards the Center Bar.  About 4 miles out JR came driving by and stopped us to say hi.  I had my usual wild rice and a bottle of Whiskey for him, my appreciation for how nice he treats us.  He exclaimed he had a special place where the fish were biting and he would take us there.  I really never expect to horn on a guys business but he insisted then turned around to lead the way.  There was a significant amount of snow on the ice so it was very thoughtful of him to not only lead us to a special spot but he also

Headed for the deep fryer!

plowed out an area so we could back our house into a clean spot without fear of getting stuck of uneven.  It worked out fabulous as we got the holes drilled and the house set down and sealed.  Finally getting the generator started, we cleaned up the house and were fishing by 3:30.  It was getting cold for sure but it was very beautiful as we watched the sun set over the lake.  Almost immediately we started catching walleyes.  These fish are wonderful eaters, all in the 14 to 18 inch range, nice and fat and perfect.  Mark and I caught enough for a nice meal on Friday night, actually I got pretty full as we had a lot of fish!  Before we headed to the resort to clean and have our fish cooked, JR stopped by and spent about an hour with us, it's a nice break for sure.  He had some friends in the house next door and we invited them to join us but they were already full and not hungry.  JR's is nice because of my wheat allergy, I simply drop a bag of Zatarain's corn based Louisiana style breading in our pail of fish and they do the rest.  Actually many of the guys think it's better but it doesn't matter to me because this is all that I can eat.

Cold morning for sure.

After watching TV we hit the sack, Mark has this pretensity to get up at 6:30 in the morning, not that I object however I do need my beauty sleep!  The smell of freshly perked coffee is nice but I needed to take care of some business.  JR had portable outhouses pulled in the area so I decided this would be a great thing to take advantage of.  Driving to one of these modern conveniences, I opened the door to find a bench with a padded seat on the hole.  A bucket was underneath the hole with a large black garbage bag situated in the right position.  As you can see by this picture, -22 was nothing to sneeze at and trust me, things are damn cold at -22F, like padded toilet seats! It definitely saved me from cleaning up the event in my house so I really don't have much to complain about.  Saturday was an ok day of fishing, they bit in the morning then again just as the sun went down, we had more than enough for supper and some to take home.  After eating we headed back to watch the rest of the football game before hitting the sack.  Certainly we were more subdued on Saturday night as well we were stuffed!  We hit the sack, waking up again at 6:30 were I repeated my Saturday morning performance before catching a couple more walleyes.   At 9:30 we started breaking camp as my electrical system started acting up.  I felt I knew what it was, a bad ground fault so while Mark lifted the house, I pulled the outlet as I had another one.  The first thing I noticed was the white neutral wire was burnt black 2 inches back from the outlet.  Further investigation showed the outlet starting to melt in that area.  It wasn't the ground fault at all but a faulty connection, not good.  Luckily I had purchased a new one for that just in case moment.  I restripped the bad wires, made sure that all the connections were tight then put it back together again, just as Mark had finished up his portion.

It was snowing as we left and it took almost an hour to get back to JR's.  I parked the house then went in to clean the fish before we left.  All in all it was a nice trip, it was good to spend some time with JR as well to meet his friends on the ice.  Next rip is scheduled for January 26th as the intent is to pull the house back to civilization and get ready for the Hunter's Perch Extravaganza on Mille Lacs in 6 weeks.