First Ice, Double the Pleasure

The much awaited first ice fishing trip of this winter season finally happened.  As I had predicted Mille Lacs lake was ready for us as my neighbor Lory accompanied me to the lake Saturday morning.  I was originally going to just bring up my gear and use the 2 up Polaris Touring snowmobile that Bill and I own yet seeing how much gear we actually had, I reconsidered and decided to haul up the ATV.   The other advantage of this would be our starting point could be 5 miles closer to our destination, a definite plus.   As always a stop at Lundeen's confirmed our first strategy as we loaded up with some fatheads, rainbows, a couple of the newest secret baits, and some refreshments.  Our destination was the deeper areas just off of Indian Point.  The best place to start from was Dewey's, just south of the point where we knew there would be ample parking.  Surprisingly he had a road plowed out at least a mile and a half out onto the lake.  Not enough to get us at our spot, we paid him the $5.00 to park on the ice (a pretty good deal) and after loading up the portables, augers, electronics, and bait we were off.  Arriving in 28 feet of water I had marked from a previous visit we separated, drilled our holes and got down to business.  I was excited to try my new camera and was not disappointed.  I usually drill 3 holes in my shack; one on the upper right for jigging, one in the lower left as a dead stick, and a third for the video camera.   The camera itself is tethered to a cable that connects to a wireless remote control positioning tripod.  This allows me to us a small hand held control to rotate the camera in any direction.  Whats real interesting is the camera has a built in sensing device which has a direction indicator on the screen.  Once you locate your lure, it's easy to pan the lure in the other hole then return to your main lure.  Well the walleyes started coming in almost immediately.  The camera is a great way to study how they approach your bait, what kind of mood they are in, and their relative size.  It also helps to confirm your depth finder readouts as they relate to what's below.   The walleyes were not very large and almost in a negative mood.  I tried a number of lures with little luck starting from a Rattlin Flyer to a Hawger Spoon.  When the fish are negative often it takes a lure like a Swedish Pimple with a minnow head to trigger a strike, but that didn't even work.  Frustrated by their lack of interest I panned over to my dead stick pole with a plain minnow hanging from a bobber.  As the camera panned over onto the screen was a walleye just sitting there with my minnow in it's mouth.  A quick jerk and the walleye was off the screen and heading to the hole in the ice.  Only about 12 inches, it never the less was my first walleye of the season.  In the meantime Lory had already caught a couple of walleyes, but was not setting the world on fire.  I decided to move down the spot about 100 yards and after only 15 minutes Lory called stating the walleyes had turned on.  Moving back to my original spot I reset putting on a jigging rap, figuring a more aggressive bite was happening.  Lory on the other hand was catching them on a plain jig head and a whole minnow, and had 4 on the ice.  I finally got the hint and switched, catching a nice perch and 5 more small walleyes, while he ended up with 12 walleyes caught and a bunch missed.  All told we caught 18 walleyes total, kept 6 respectable fish and had a blast.  As usual the prime time was between 3:30 and 5:00.  Here is a picture of Lory with a nice eater.

Sunday was a cleanup day around the house and with things settling down, I decided to try the dusk crappie bite at one of my favorite early season lakes near Buffalo, MN.  My other neighbor Tom wanted to go with us on Saturday however his truck's timing chain had other plans for him.  Sunday was a better day for him so we loaded up the gear and headed out, arriving at the lake around 3:00.  We knew this would be a quick trip and if the crappies are in, it won't take long.   The fishing area is close to shore allowing us to simply walk to the spot.  Some guys were driving on the ice which was about 10 - 12 inches and I surmised they must have much better insurance than I do!  The sunnies were in like crazy so I took this picture of the camera view below the shelter.  There are at least 8 sunfish swimming by and you can see the one near the center about ready to inhale the bait (the small white object in front of it).  While watching the sunfish sort of disappeared as the next thing you saw was a large northern pike coming into view.  I guess those fish aren't that stupid.  

Sundown came however the crappies had not shown up.  Too dark for the camera I put it away relying on my trusty old Vexilar FL20.  Tom was determined to try some crappie minnows while my go to bait is a waxie.  In this fairly shallow water (about 12 feet) I like to work the water column as crappies can be about any depth this time of year.  Noticing a jiggle at the the bottom of the display I lowered my bait and was rewarded with that tell tale inhale of a crappie bite.  Setting the hook, it was a solid fish, just what we were looking for about 12 inches.  The real question would be if this was a loner or part of a school.  10 minutes later confirmed it was a loner.  I did manage a second smaller crappie and added it to the pile of 3 reasonable sunfish and the crappie.  Although we didn't slay them, it was still nice to get out 2 days in a row.   This weekend is Christmas and I will be busy visiting my dad, who turns 81 this year.  With a little luck I will be back at Mille Lacs on Sunday and maybe a couple more days before New Years.  BTW, I am keeping the Dean Martin Christmas song for another week as we did get another 6 inches on Monday, so enjoy!  Have a fabulous Christmas and hope each one of you has a good tug at the end of your line.

Oh The Weather Outsides Delightful.......

This Christmas was interesting for us in Minnesota. It started on December 20th with all the local weather broadcasters forecasting the next "Storm of the Century" starting on Wednesday night through Saturday. Two low pressure systems were set up to meet, dumping up to 24 inches of snow by the time it's done, or so they say. All this brew-ha-ha forced mom to cancel our traditional Christmas Eve in Eleva, moving it to Sunday. Well, the snow turned to rain and although the storm lasted almost 4 days, the totals were somewhat less than predicted. About12 inches here in Dayton, it only accumulated back home to the tune of around 4 inches. Either way my snow blower and ATV got a pretty good workout, as well the weather forecasters lived their fantasies. Traveling to Galesville on Saturday, it was Christmas Day with my sister-in-law. My present to Sue was to fix her gas fireplace that would not stay lit, then loading Microsoft Office 2007 on the computer. Christmas on Sunday turned out to be pretty good as everyone was not stressed to get everything accomplished in a short time. As a bonus I did get to visit my classmate and good friend Rick Semingson and his parents, Dunk and Mary. Rick is retiring this year, boy how time flies. We also visited my friend Kevin and Janet Aiona. Come to think of it Kevin is a year younger than I and is also retired! He had a nice bucket of sunfish caught in Alma a few hours earlier. The above picture is looking east from my driveway. We have a good 14 inches on the ground and it's time to get the snowmobile out and put a few miles on.

One of the things I like to bring my folks for Christmas is my now famous apple wood smoked turkey. Having a variety of smokers over the years I finally have a professional style smoke oven made by Cookshack. After trying a number of methods have settled into brining the turkey with Maple Cure from PS Seasoning, a Wisconsin meat supply company. Making a brine using 1 pound of cure to 2 gallons of water, I reserve about a pint of cure and inject it into the turkey before soaking for 24 hours. One of the best turkeys for smoking are Archer Farms Brand, butter injected frozen turkey's from Target. They produce the most moist finished product of any brand I've tried, butter just flows out as you make that first slice into the breast meat. Taking up to 1 hour a pound, apple wood smoke at 250 degrees, the picture is the finished product. I guarantee it tastes as good as it looks. The brine has cure in it and gives the turkey a ham like flavor that is second to none.

With the snow messing up my weekend schedule, my neighbor Lory and I got out on Saturday afternoon to see if those big crappies would show up west of town. Although we did not get the big snows as predicted, what did snow was heavy, wet, mixed with rain. These conditions make ice fishing interesting. The snow on the ice causes 2 major issues, first being that it insulates the ice slowing the freezing process. Without this latest storm, we would be driving on the lakes by now. The other issue is the weight of the snow will cause water to be forced up on the ice flooding the surface under the snow. Forming a layer of slush, it makes travel and setting up on the ice very sloppy. Any ice houses that were on the lakes prior to the storm need to be jacked up higher than this slush layer or they will freeze in solid. Driving to the lake we found the conditions as described. Pulling our gear, it seemed like we walked a mile up hill! 6 inches of snow, 2 of it was slush, 150 yards later we set up. Immediately the sunfish appeared and they were hungry. With about an 90 minutes before the sun went down the action was steady catching about 30 fish. Most were small but I managed to keep 4 nice ones while waiting for the crappies to show. As the sun set those 12 inch crappies where non-existent in my holes. Lory had slightly better luck catching one. Another mile back to the truck, we called it a day. Mille Lacs is in my sight this weekend and maybe another trip to to check out the crappies. This cold weather predicted for the rest of the week will certainly help the situation.