Here, There, Everywhere!

Well I have been out and about in the last few weeks with some okay results.  I'll start back a week or so when Josh joined me for the day and we started out at a spot that I know hold some nice fish.  The weather was pretty up and down which has really increased the major bites.  We slowly worked the spot and about an hour in Josh was drilled on his topwater by what seemed to be a great fish.  He made really short work of the fish, horsing it in as fast as he could.  It did put up quite the battle, but was eventually overwhelmed and brought in.  We knew it was going to be a really nice fish, but we didn't think it would push the 50" mark.  After we got her back into the water, we brought out the pole and it went all of 51".  I was pretty pumped for Josh to catch his first 50" and to have the first 50" in the new rig.  We fished for a while longer with no luck and headed for home.

  A few days later, we hit the water again under the cover of darkness looking for something to wet our net.  Same spot, and again it didn't take too long before I had a fish drill my bucktail on the first two cranks.  The problem was the rods in the boat were tangled in the net so I had to take it easy and walk the fish around the boat before we had a net under it.  The problem was during night when the fish eat, they EAT.  The fish had the full foot of bait in its mouth and I started to cut my hook out.  I couldn't have safely released that fish without a good set of hook cutters, and I am darn thankful we did it in short time.  We guessed it to be around the high 30's, a fish before we headed up north for a trip.  The plan was to head up there to fish the evening in a friend's boat and then pick up Josh's boat which was in for repair and was going to be done the next day.  We got out there and hit a few spots before we moved a giant of a fish, easily shattering the 50" mark.  The next spot we saw 4 fish, 2 of which would have done 50"; it was getting out of hand.  We fished into the night with no excitement when all of a sudden Tyler had one explode on his topwater 5 feet from the boat, well it was the fish we saw earlier before, a true giant!  A quick jerk and the bait was safely out of the fish's grasp, a mistake we have all made.  The next morning we hit it early and went back to the same fish which was hot for a few different topwater baits, but would never hit it again.  We packed it in and headed to the Ranger dealership in Moorhead.  Well, really long story short it wasn't ready.  Yes, it was an experience and I'll leave it at that.  It left a bitter taste in our mouths having to leave those fish, but I intend to make the trip again hopefully this time with a few 50"s.  Travis, Eric, and I also spent a night on Mille Lacs, but came home with a few follows and a nice pike that Eric got on a bait that was half the size of the fish.  From across Minnesota...Keep Livin' the Dream!