Northwest Sportshow

Sportshow from above

It's that time of year again to attend the Northwest Sportshow here at the Convention Center in Minneapolis.  It is one of the largest sportshow's in the Midwest and it is always a great time to get caught up on the latest and greatest as well, to get some of those year long nagging questions answered.  Almost everyone who is in the industry is there including the boat and motor manufacturers, bait and tackle manufacturers, resorts, vacation destinations, and pretty much anything you would be wanting for upcoming fishing season.  Frankie and Deb from Frankie's Bait and Marine are back from their late winter getaway in south Texas and I am anxious to talk about motor options for my river boat.  Lowrance electronic will be there and in fact one of the things they offer is Lowrance University, an hour long course specifically about their products and how to use them.....I have a ton of questions for them, especially after their recent announcement of the Lowrance trolling motor.  There has been a lot of changes in the industry lately, especially in consolidations of brands.  Alumacraft boats has been bought by BRP, of course Ranger Boats was purchased a few years ago by Johnny Morris's group, Bass Pro Shops, who last year has purchased Cabela's and continues to make changes.  All of these things contributes to new sets of paradigms the change the way the fishing industry presents itself.  Specifically I had a great conversation with a Lowrance guy at Cabela's a couple of weeks ago, which has me thinking about looking at the next level.  Garmin has really stepped up to the plate and it is exciting to see some of the new things they are offering and whether everyone else will follow suit. 

Shimano Calcutta Casting Reel

With it looking like I will have a lot more time this year to fish, one of the things on the agenda is to look for new adventures, maybe Canada, Central America, I don't know, something that I haven't tried yet.  The last couple of months found a couple of nice Berkley Lightning Spinning rods find a home in the shed.  One was for my friend Joe in Texas, one for catfishing on the river, as well a new crappie rod.  Unfortunately while in the shed I found a couple of older but still very functional Shimano Calcutta bait casting reels.  These are premium reels that were popular when the old Garcia Ambassadors and higher end casting reels became available.  Instead of a magnetic spool breaking system they have centrifugal weights that you slide in and out based on how much spool braking you prefer.  Today most casting reels tend to be low profile with magnet braking,  however these are still quite functional yet the problem is they are not mounted to anything.  Those Lightning Rods had some in the casting category and at $29 each would have been perfect.  Feeling guilty that they are simply sitting there without a home forces me to look at the show to see if there are any deals for  maybe a 6 1/2 foot medium heavy casting rod, something that can be kept pre rigged for catfishing on the river, dang that sounds like a great idea!  I continue to be in awe of the convenience of the whole thing. 

Our snow is finally leaving us and the threat of flooding continues to be in the forecast.  Luckily it's been pretty dry and although it melts during the day, we have seen below freezing temperatures at night, mitigating the flooding risk somewhat.  Either way the sunshine and warmth really feel nice.  I am looking forward to maybe a last ice fishing outing before the ice finally goes out, that could easily take 6 weeks or more.  Here's hoping it will be out by May 10th, fishing opener in Minnesota.

It's Always Better to be Lucky Than Good!

So last week's post described the fate of one of my beloved fishing rod and reel combo's.  Sitting in 10 feet of water at the bottom of the Mississippi River is not exactly my idea of a proper storage site.   The St. Croix Legend rod is a beautiful piece of fishing gear as it's distinctive blue color stands out from the more traditional black colored rods. The attached Shimano Chronarch reel was a left handed wind, special order low profile baitcaster with the latest spool and braking technology.  Although I never did get comfortable with the tight reeling motion needed by my left hand to crank the reel handle, I did like the convenience of a single fluid motion when hooking a walleye while trolling shad raps.   I am always very careful with my equipment but when I turned around in the boat and didn't see that sky blue rod anywhere that big knot one gets in your stomach settled pretty hard.  My ranger has nice sides keeping rods that are set down fairly secure.  The jon boat on the other hand has very low sides and which(as I found out) requires much more diligence with your equipment.  The other issue is putting limits on the amount of fishing rods one needs to take with everytime you go out, a habit hard to break.  Finding the rod gone requires one to quickly get a handle on your emotions.  As stated last week, crying over spilled milk does little to solve your problem, hence forth this weeks plan of attempting to get rid of my knot!  Having purchased the large snagging hooks in Denver the next stop was Fleet Farm to pick up the rest of my scheme.  The idea was to get a 3 foot piece of 5/8" threaded rod, finding some eye bolts, some large nuts, chain to connect the hooks, and chain to pull the entire contraption on the bottom of the river.  I had thought about solving this problem and felt I had a viable contraption at hand.  On Saturday afternoon, with the help of Lory, we headed to the scene of my agony.  It was closer to launch at the Dayton/Crow River landing and drive down a mile to that portion of the river.  Arriving at the dock, my starting point, had its owner cleaning out brush.  Approaching the dock he was nice but had that sceptical look like...what are you guys really up too?  The water had dropped another 8 inches from last week and the current had slowed enough to allow the 15 hp Evinrude to hold the boat in one place while backtrolling.   Lory's first snag caught a rather large waterlogged piece of wood.  Big enough to bend the hooks and rip off one of the chains, I towed it to the middle of the river and headed back.  Each effort brought up more junk, to the point where I was getting frustrated.  10 minutes into the effort Lory brought up the contraption and this 7 foot blue rod was hooked onto one of the chains.  My secondary worry was if we did actually hook the rod it would disconnect the minute it reached the surface.  Lory had it hooked through a rod guide and it wasn't going nowhere.  The rod had started to get some insects attached to it and the shifting sand basically filled the reel. I cannot even express how relieved I was to actually get my prized possession back.  The rod looks good as new and I decided to send the reel back to Shimano to have the factory tear it apart and clean it. As for Lory, he has a few battle wounds dealing with unhooking logs while the boat moved around.  As the post title states, it's sometimes better to be lucky than good. 

So with that out of the way we pointed the boat up river and headed for the 101 bridge, 3 miles upstream.  The first thing we noticed was a guy walking the shoreline, sorting rocks.  A quick "whatchadoin?" resulted in finding a new location to look for agates.   Working our way back to the landing I spent most of the time casting bombers while Lory put on one of my favorite Rattlin' Rouges, the brown perch.  I am always amazed at the ferocity of a 10 inch smallmouth hitting a 4 inch lure.   Although the day was already a success for me, Lory picked up this beautiful 17 inch bass that inhaled his Rouge.  Now that the river current is reasonable it would be fun to start exploring the walleye and catfish hangouts. Ending up with about 9 smallmouth it was another good day.  We have only fished crankbaits as the current speed forced a quick presentation however the ability to slip the river using the main motor should offer an expanded choice of lures like tube jigs, beetle spins, and live bait on 3 way rigs.   The famous river guide from Big Lake, Dan Gapen, used jigs like the Ugly Bug to catch 30 - 50 bass an outing and it would be a blast to get that proficient.  In addition to recovering my rod I successfully installed my Lowrance LWX-1 weather/Sirius radio module for my HDS 10.  I removed my Garmin 162 chartplotter, replaced my Johnny Ray mount with the heavy duty RAM mount and generally cleaned up my electronics mounting.  Pulling the boat out of the shed (the metal roof blocks the signal) I was able to lock onto the satellite, see the weather overlay on the chart plotter function, then call on the radio service, and voila!  What was even better was Sirius set me up to shut off service in the fall without having to pay the reactivation fees in the spring.  It works very well as I was getting a little tired of listening to my Ipod all the time.  It's been 6 weeks since I have been up to Mille Lacs and although the reports have been spotty, it's always worth a try.  Maybe this week.