A Look Back At The 2007 Season. Thank You Everybody!

Once again we find ourselves itching like crazy to hit that frozen ice that is starting to take form across much of the state.  While I am excited along with the rest of you, I want to take a little time out to look back at the great months that I shared with so many of you throughout the open water season.  There were so many huge fish caught, and great laughs shared that I don't really know where to start.  I have taken hundreds of pictures yet again this season, and as I look through them, I remember each and every one of them like it was yesterday.  For me, it is always great to be in the outdoor world, however as I look at all of those pictures, I kinda chuckle at the friends I have made and the memories that won't ever be taken from me.  After all, isn't that what it's about. 

The early season started with numerous trips to area lakes and rivers and some days it seemed that we could fill bath tubs full of walleyes.  Other days were not as spectacular, but they always gave us some laughs and taught me a few more details about what I was doing wrong.  As the season progressed, I found a new style of fishing which left me sitting on a river in the middle of the night chasing prehistoric Flathead Catfish.  That was sweet too!  I had some trips up to the big pond that always seemed to coincide with a hurricane, and still we landed a few dandies. 

As the summer progressed I shared an uncountable number of days on the water with great people from all over the country.  For the most part, we landed that trophy of a lifetime nearly every time on the water.  Some days the muskies seemed to come into the boat like it was their job.  The largest number in my boat for one day this season was 8 fish, and streaks of boating fish each time were carried through more than one week at times.  Each time on the water I continued to learn a new thing or two to help keep the fish coming in the boat, and the results were great.  I had this "musky mojo" thing at an all time high, and the rewards were sweet.  People of every age landed fish with me this season, and each one of them were great in their own way.  The greatest reward for me being a guide is that I get to see that smile on a persons face when they land that fish of a lifetime, and it keeps me coming back day after day. 

As the season progressed into late fall, I found myself fishing much further into the year than I had ever done before. I can't even explain how great those rewards were, as I found myself in newspaper articles and chatter throughout the state for catching some "freak of nature" giant fish on the big pond.  I learned a lot in spring, summer and fall that will surely keep me progressing as a fisherman and your fishing guide.  I would like to thank each and every one of you that helped to make it such a great year, but I don't think I have enough space on this website to do so.  You know who you are, and I thank you.

It's a sad day that I will be putting the boat and the gear away, however it would be weird to see a guy jigging over the side of his boat through an ice hole, so I have no choice.  The stories are in no way going to slow down, and Trophy Encounters will continue to be a place to ask questions and hear some of the latest and greatest from not only myself, but by all the others that are telling me their stories to share.  I hope to have something new on this site every day to check out, so make sure you look at this page, and the page called "Its Their Story" to keep on finding new information.

It has been a great run yet again, and I look forward to seeing all of you again on the water in the very near future.  Now its time to get the other equipment ready.  Who wants to go Ice Feeeeshin???  Thanks again everybody, and as always, Keep On Livin That Dream!

Toby's First Hunt....Awww Aint He Cute!

This past weekend was the normal ritual for many hunters across the state.  Eat a whole pile of turkey on Thursday, sit on the couch and watch a football game or two with a cold one in hand and try to figure out if the body will allow you to get off the couch in time to hunt in the morning.  The ladies head to the local shopping center the next day(some of them earilier than even us hunters rise from the wrapper) and the men head out in search of a rooster or two.  This year, Dingy and I continued with our now 2 year old ritual of heading out west in hopes of bagging a rooster or two.  The new companion on our trip is this cute little fella named Toby.  He just might be the best looking pup that I have ever laid my eyes on.  I have had the pleasure of seeing this peeing machine from its first couple of weeks of life and watching it grow the last 4 months.  I think I am in love with this dog, and Tim, if you don't look out, I just might take it home with me.  Our hopes on this adventure was to see if Toby would be able to understand what it means to "Hunt Em Up."   The day before we headed for the 2 hour hike out west, we stopped at a local spot of mine and had this future Pheasant huntin machine run around in search of some roosters just to see what he would do.  The result was totally awesome.  While he didn't understand exactly what had happened, he was running around through some brush for the heck of it, and a rooster got up right in front of him and I.  Officially I get to say that this gem of a pup jumped his first rooster in front of me and I was able to knock it down.  Only so special because of the unknowing puppy that was now playing with the feathers on the bird that he officially flushed.  I think it hit a soft spot in me, and now I am left wondering how long I can wait before I have my own puppy dog.  The picture of us is kinda blurry, but one that is very clear in my memory.  Thanks Dingy and Toby for that bird, it was maybe the coolest hunt of my life even if it only lasted for 20 minutes.

The hunt out west didn't treat us the best for some goofy reason.  We had a proven dog in Nelly (Nates Dog) and Toby fresh of his first hunt.  Nate, Dingy and myself met up with my cousin Nate out in Benson, and we hunted some of the best looking property that I have ever touched in MN before.  The birds were there, but they were skittish and just found every way imaginable to stay out of range.  Oh well, it was still a great hunt, and Toby spent most of his time eating every weed, stick, or cattail in sight.  The weather was perfect and we had the laughs that are always expected on a trip like that.  On the route back, Toby reminded us of the small bladder he has, and dribbled on not only me, but Nate and our sweatshirts that we gave him to use for a pillow.  Hahaha, still laughing about that darn dog. 

I want to give a shout out to Lynn Schulz and his hunting crew out in the Dakota's.  Lynn traveled all the way up from Arizona to spend some time with his family and a long overdue trip out to the prairie lands for some pheasant hunting with friends.  Hope it went great for you boys! 

Brrrrrrr!  That Ice will be here before we know it.  Stay tuned for a conclusion on another great season of open water fishing.  I will try to recap the greatness that we accomplished in our many trips across the state.  I also will send out as many thank you's as I can along with what is on tap for our quest of more Trophy Encounters.  Until Next Time Y'all, Keep on Livin The Dream!

Either we are on to somethin...Or...We are on somethin!

The title of this journal entry was the theme for the day yesterday on our qwest for the next state record.  As we pulled out of the boat harbor bundled to the max, we looked at each other shaking our heads yet again.  The only thing that Theo could say was, "either we are on to somethin, or we are on somethin."  I chuckled and said that we have to be on something to be doing this crazy adventure.  With the recent results of my last 3 trips to the big pond, our hopes were very high in not only landing a large muskie, but trying to break that magical 54 pound mark set 50 years ago.  I have to give my hats off to these boys (Todd and Theo) because they really gave it their all yesterday and they kept a positive attitude the entire time.  The conditions were brutal, which probably made Theo's new personal best all the more bitter sweet.  We had waves crashing over the side of the boat all morning, and the cold water and air temperatures caused everything in the boat to turn into a giant ice cube.  It really doesn't get any more hard core than what we did yesterday.  Knowing that we were after Sweet Mamma(the next state record that I have already nicknamed) our mojo was at an all time high when 10 minutes into the morning Theo got rocked by a fish.  It was a crazy few seconds of waiting to see what he was battling, and hoping that Sweet Mamma would come out from under the boat.  While it wasn't the next state record fish, it was a very nice and fat 45 incher and gave us quite a bit of excitement.  It was Theo's new personal best that he has now increased 3 times with me this season and a fish that any body would be happy to have. 

Our day went on with 3 more muskies grabbing the bait, but only to leave us wondering about what we almost battled.  How they can grab a lure full of hooks and let it go is beyond me, but they seem to do it with frequency.  We shared laughs, stories and more laughs throughout the day, and never had a dull moment on the water.  We didn't land Sweet Mamma, but were pretty confident that she saw our lures more than one time.  I truly had a great experience on the water with those boys, and will always remember the last few trips as my being completely crazy for even attempting that water.  I know that one of these days that lake will reward somebody with their efforts, and who knows, it may just be in my boat!  I put a few other pictures up to describe the type of fun we had and depics the elements that we were dealing with.  I think my favorite is the one of the Tullibee that I snagged and having Theo (Darth Vader) in the background all bundled up posing with me for the picture.  Rock on Boys!

I want to give a special thanks to everybody who has given me such great recognition for the fish I have been fortunate enough to catch lately.  It means a lot to hear from you all, and I appreciate every congratulation you send my way.  If you would like to see another story of the near state record that I boated a few days back, you can find it in the Brainerd Sunday paper.  I feel honored to be given the entire page of the outdoor section and it is a pretty neat read for me to see, not to mention a pretty neat accomplishment for a fisherman like me.  You can also check it out online by going to Brainerd Dispatch.com and clicking on the sports section, followed by the outdoor section on the left hand side of the website.  Thanks again everybody, it has been a great run to this point.  Until Next time, Keep on Living The Dream!

NoDak 2007....

Well, I just returned home from a 5 day trip out to our neighboring state of North Dakota.  On our list of activities for the trip was hunting, hunting, laughing, hunting, and laughing then hunting some more.  I was joined on this expedition by a group of pranksters that go by the names of Dusty, Scott, Chad, Adam, Nate, Sean and Matt.  I don't think I need to say that we had a fun time, but we did.  Our main goal throughout the trip was to harvest ourselves ducks, geese and pheasants while sharing many laughs.  Well, we didn't fare too well on the harvesting part, but we did share many laughs.

The hunting was far from what we had experienced in past years.  The lack of ducks in the area made it very tough to get on a good hunt.  When you couple that with having very little birds on the properties that we could hunt, it made for a lot of driving and very frustrating times.  In the past, we didn't have much of a problem gaining access to fields that had birds in them, but this year was another story.  We had two vehicles with us, and we split up covering territory looking for flocks of ducks landing in the fields.  We are scouting machines when we go out there, and our main mission while out there is hunting Mallards and Pintails in the fields.  If you  have experienced it before, you know what I mean when I say there is nothing better than duck hunting in a field.  We drove hundreds of miles each day looking for a great place to set up in the mornings, but after 6 hours in a vehicle and finding a field that has ducks in it, it is very frustrating when the landowner says that he doesn't allow hunters any more.  Needless to say, we came back to the Falcon (our home base) each night with low morale and frustrated talk of how the days went.  It wasn't that we didn't have land to hunt on, thanks to Matt, we had land to hunt on, but there just wasn't birds using it.  So, with the miles we put on, we had to resort to jumping ponds to get the birds moving and to try to get shots.  This worked a few times for both vehicles, but the weather was horrible for sneaking up to birds.  3 seperate days there was literally NO WIND!  How the heck can there be no wind for 3 straight days in North Dakota.  I have never seen it, but it wasn't to our liking and made for difficult stalks on the birds.

Dealing with our tough conditions and lack of birds and land, we made the most of what we had.  We tried a few of the proven spots from years past and connected with a couple of birds on our outings.  We also opted to try a field hunt that had roughly 20,ooo geese on it which gave us a few birds and one heck of a sight in the morning.  If nothing else, it was pretty neat to see a sky so full of birds that you can't see the end of the flock.  We did get a few of them to come in, and made them pay for their mistakes, however it was difficult to hide ourselves in a picked pea field that was only 2 inches tall.  When you have 40,000 eyes looking at you, any mistake costs the shot, and all you are left with is the loudest group of birds on the planet flying over your head.  It was still sweet.

We also hunted a field that had a few hundred mallards landing in it, but they all came 25 minutes before legal shooting hours.  Apparently hunting clear sky's during a full moon means the birds don't fly during legal shooting hours.  We literally had mallards and pintails walking around in our decoys all morning before legal shooting hours.  We could only shoot at the last 2 flocks that came in, and then they were done feeding for the morning.  Many times we had ducks within reach of our blinds, which made for cool memories, but not many ducks to munch on for dinner.

The pheasant numbers were great out there, but we were so determined to find mallards in fields that we hardly even hunted them.  Only 3 of us bought pheasant licenses, so we didn't leave the other guys sit in the trucks, and when we did walk for them, we had tons of birds to shoot at.  It gave us most of our meals during the evenings.  Not to mention that Nate bagged himself the largest pheasant that I have ever seen.  The tail feathers were almost double the size of all the other birds we shot.  It was quite the story on how he bagged it, but I'll let him tell that to you if you ask him.

All in all, we had a very frustrating hunt.  We shot a mixed bag of birds and even some nice looking ones.  We put on way to many miles, and laughed way to much.  If it wasn't for all the fun we had driving around and at the Falcon, it would have been a pretty uneventful trip.  I spent most of my miles with Scotty and my bro Adam in my vehicle and we laughed our butts off the entire time.  While at the home base, we spent hours laughing at the funny and stupid things that happened in each vehicle throughout the day, and each person had their turn getting the brunt of the jokes.  I couldn't think of a better way to spend time with my buddies, and as I look back at the trip, I have to admit that I think it was a success.  After all, you don't always have to bag your limit to have a great time.  I just have one word that sums up the entire trip and will always be remembered by us all....BODVIG!!!  I want to thank all of you guys that came out there as well as the farmers that allowed us to hunt their land.  Next year we'll be singing "OH CANADA" as we cross the border and find some areas that may be better suited for our field hunting approach.  Guys....I can't wait!  Thanks Again!  Now it's back to the water for some more muskies before it freezes up.  Until Next Time....Keep on Livin That Dream!

Recent Happenings....

I wanted to post this goofy picture so I can look back years from now and remember that on October 6th of 2007 it was 89 degrees on the water and we were fishing with our shirts off getting a tan.  Not to mention the awesome time the 9 of us buddies shared on the water that evening.  It was picture perfect, we had two boats (mine and Dusty's) and we filled 9 of us in them.  The list of friends included Dusty, Wags, Miky, Jeremy, Vans, Whorl, Scotty, Nate, and myself.  We slayed a pile of above average Bluegills and Crappies for the local landowners that let us hunt their property throughout the season.  That was our goal and we accomplished it to the fullest.  Thanks boys!

While I haven't been out putting any beasts in the boat the last couple of days, I want to share with you what some of my readers have sent me, and what has been happening on the "big pond" up north.  My tourney partner and good friend Mike has been continuing his streak of giants this year, and has some real hawgs to show for it.  Kent landed this 52.5 incher the other evening and they also tied into a couple of others.  Man  they some fat fish on that lake this time of the year.  The story behind the 52.5 was awesome!  This fish chased the bait on the figure 8 for several turns before it latched on and went airborn with a foot of line out.  If that doesn't give you a heart attack, then I don't know what will.   

Also, You just have to be the happiest man in the world when you get to hold a fatty like this one.  I was sent this pic a few days ago from a past guest in my boat.  His co-worker was up on the "big pond" also and got himself one heck of a hawg.  Just look at the belly on that beast.  Another giant that this lake has been known for over the past several years.  Very, very cool guys!  Keep up the good work!  More pics and stories coming soon.....Who wants to be in them???