Don't Tell My Girlfriend, But I Think I'm In Love!

Ok so this just might be the sweetest thing I have ever been a part of.  I know, I know, I do love muskie fishing more than probably anybody in this universe, but there is just something about these river giants that pushes my buttons.  Sitting in complete darkness and knowing that your rod is possibly seconds away from being pulled in the water if you don't hold on tight is quite the way to spend a night, and when the earth shattering strike happens, you realize how sweet of an experience you are a part of.  Up until last week, I have never actually targeted these huge flatheads, but have heard nothing but great things from the people I know that do catch them.  I thought I would take advantage of the break in daylight activity with the heat, and sit out on the Mighty Minnesota River after daylight hours are finished.  Matt, Bails and myself know very little about this program other than the basics we picked up from hearsay over the years.  I will be honest with all Y'all when I say that it aint that easy when you are dealing with floating logs and deadheads and gushing current, but it sure is a blast.  As you can see from the picture of the Cat (meow) that Matt is holding, we ended up figuring a thing or two out before we ran out of bait on the second night.  The first night we launched from the access and went upstream looking for spots to fish once darkness fell and the second night we went downstream doing the same.  I feel that this was very crucial to our success, because navigation on that bad boy during the dark is difficult enough even knowing where we were and what we were looking for.  If we had waited to search for spots during darkness, we would have probably had very poor results.  The key factor for us seemed to be having many spots to hit, because every time we hit a new spot, someone was almost immediately being throttled by these large goofy wiskered creatures.  When I say throttled, I mean throttled!  The bites aren't your normal walleye taps, and many of the strikes almost rip the pole from your unknowing hands.  I won't say that we are experts at these guys yet, however we learned a ton on our couple of trips on the water.  I won't put all the pictures up, but we did catch several channels and flatheads between 5 and 13 pounds, with one giant that we don't know how to figure the weight for.  Since none of us had ever seen one of these prehistoric giants up close, and we had no scale, we just gazed at it's huge size, and figured it to be somewhere between 30 and 40 pounds.  All I know is that it seemed to cover the entire floor of the boat, and looking at Matt's 6 foot stature compared to the fish definitely shows how large this awesome fish was.  I have had some awesome muskie battles in my day, but watching the strength and power of this brute makes me almost shake in excitement for the time that I get to do battle with one of that size.  This is totally a new experience for me, and since the heat of July typically makes for tough fishing on our lakes, I am excited to chase a few more bruisers such as this.  I think I'm addicted!  We fished a few hours after dark on Thursday, and the entire night on Friday.  The giant was hooked somewhere around 2:30 to 2:45 in the morning, and it ate a large sucker minnow after Bail's and Myself both lost fish that we couldn't move from the bottom.  I don't know if these cats (meow) swim in schools, but we had the most insane 15 minutes of fishing that I have possibly ever been a part of.  Bail's had a fish almost pull him in, only to shake the bait and leave him with a few shreads of minnow, and I had a hookset on a fish that felt like I was trying to pull up the bottom of the river, only to have Hennen screaming that he can't stop his line from screaming out the muskie reel.  Needless to say, our headlamps were going back and forth trying to figure out whose pole we should be shining the light on.  Truly Awesome!  Until next time Y'all, Keep on Livin the Dream!

I almost forgot, Who would ever have guessed that Bails would have to catch something gross from the river.  Well obviously he had to catch another oddball creature.  So I thought it was weird and disgusting when he pulled this nasty turtle out of 30 feet of water, but not even 15 minutes later, he landed ANOTHER ONE!  All I can do is shake my head at the crap this man pulls out of the water.  Now i'm done til next time I write.  Go on Livin the Dream now! 

More From Shore! Still Waiting On Opener!

Well I would have to say that this has been the longest spring EVER! I say that because the weather has been pretty fantastic for the last month, and all I want to do is to chase around those darn Walleyes, but we can't yet. Ughhhh! Oh well it is almost here.  To pass the time, last Saturday we managed to sneak away for a couple of hours and throw our Crawlers in the river.  I hadn't done this for many years until a few days prior, and it kinda got me interested again.  I love that I can just hang out on the shore and leave my pole jammed in a stick waiting for the massive tug of whatever may grab it.  The funny thing about watching it, is that as soon as you look away for a split second, the darn rod is being pulled so hard that it is airborn, and it's such a ruckuss to catch it before it goes in the drink.  We caught many fish, including the obvious Carp, along with Catfish and some Bullheads.  Not too much variety that day, but still fun and hard fighting fish. 

Monday evening was Whorl's birthday (Happy Birthday Mike), and we spent the evening out on Waconia catching anything that would eat our crappie minnows.  We battled a couple of extremely intense rain showers, and extremely intense fish.  Instead of only catching crappies and sunnies, this time the Bucketmouths were mixed right in, and we caught several of them as well, including a few over the 4lb mark and 1 absolute giant.  It wasn't that we were fishing for them, but they were up shallow with the panfish preparing to spawn, and they were taking our teeny tiny jigs as well.  Nothing but fun!

I am getting absolutely pumped for this years fishing opener which is only days away.  I haven't quite decided where I'm gonna spend the weekend yet, but I do know that it should be a great one.  The weather is suppose to stay decent which is unheard of for the fishing opener, and with the warmer than average spring, the walleyes should be more than willing to snatch up something swimming past them.  I want to wish good luck to all of you on your quest this weekend, and hope to see you all on the water very soon.  You all have my digits, call me and let me know how it went for ya, or create your own post in the chat room, and tell all of us how you did on your opener.  Good luck, and be safe!

I also want to give a shout out to the great guys over at the All Saints Lutheran Church in Norwood.  I was invited to speak for them last night, and enjoyed all the questions and fun from last night, not to mention the awesome fish and food at their fish fry.  Thanks again guys!  Fish On Fellas!

Back To The Basics

This past Friday evening we decided to think outside the box and do something we don't normally do.  Yes, we were still fishing, but this time we left the boat at home, and put on some dirty old shoes and pants on.  Yep, that's right, we hit the river and sat on the bank with our fishing poles leaning up on a stick.  With the weather being perfect for the occasion, we brought our worms and chicken liver down to see what would possibly take a bite of our offering.  As you can see from the picture, we managed a little bit of a variety, which makes the experience all the better.  According to Seth "HollyWood Jones" the bite will only get better for the next few weeks, so I suggest getting a rod, a large weight, a plain hook, some cold ones, and a few logs for a fire, then heading to a nice bank on the river and see what's swimming there.  It's kinda nice to just relax and sit in the weeds staring at the pole, instead of busting my butt in the hectic waters that we have around us.  Getting back to the basics is extremely enjoyable, and I recommend giving it a try again.  Fish On Y'all! 

It's Nice Out, Get Out And Enjoy It!

So I suppose I should fill in the gap from the past week or so.  Our outing last Wednesday including Jeff, Johnny and myself, once again trying for the Mighty Mississippi Walleye.  Well, we tried, but didn't fare quite as well in our morning outing as we had the previous couple of trips.  We managed to land several of the bass that I have pictured here, along with a few other rough fish, and only 2 walleyes.  The water went from 32 to 54 degrees in less than 2 weeks, which lead to a lull in the action after the big spring spawn.  The fish just weren't done recuperating from the spawn and ready to eat when we were there.  Oh well, it was a fun time while it lasted.  And whose to say I won't be back.

Friday lead us to Waconia for some panfish action, and the fish didn't disappoint us.  Bails brought his lovely lady out on the water to catch a few as well and as you can see from the pic, they enjoyed the weather and the fishing.  Guys, if there has ever been a good time to get out on the water with your lady and spend time, this is one of them.  The weather has been fabulous, and the fish are real easy to catch, which makes for an enjoyable time and plenty of action.  She won't get bored with watching you troll over half of the lake and catch nothing, and you can look like you know exactly what you are talking about.  Plus, the fish are quite tasty with this cold water.  Oh, and definitely a great time for the kids as well.  Showing them action is how they will get more interested.  Just my opinion, but I think I may be on to something.  Plus you can always catch a bonus fish or two like Mike did when he landed this above average Eye'.  Nice fish buddy!  Boy I can hardly wait for the season to open in a couple of weeks.

Monday I hit the water again, This time it was with my dad.  It has been a while since he's been out because of his motorcycle accident last year, but it sure was a good relief to see him hopping around in the boat again.  No monster fish on this outing, but a lot of good eaters.  We sat around catching them most of the evening and listened to our Minnesota Twins on the tube.  A nice way to end a day! FishOn Fellas!

What a Day!

I don't know where to start explaining our hardcore day of early spring fishing, so I think I'll just take it from the top.  My crammed boat consisted of the "Tripod" plus 1.  Whorl, Bails, Dusty Bottoms, and Myself ganged up this past Saturday to put sore lips on everything that swims, and as you will see from these pictures, we caught many species throughout the day and even tangled with creatures that we didn't know existed. 

We hit the murky river waters very early in the morning and had instant success.  I stuck a couple of nice eye's followed by Whorl and soon after Bails.  We got in a nice flow of landing these eye's when Bails "as always" managed to make it interesting and catch something not on our list.  He and Mike doubled up, but as you can see from the above picture, Bails' fish was categorized as the "Rough" one.  Just a start to his multi species list for the day.   We all had success early except that Dusty Bottoms had a little rust on his equipment and needed some time to get back into catching mode for 2007.  It wasn't until about 20 fish were in the boat and he tried 3 different rods and 4 different jigs before he was chirping "Fish On."  It was kinda funny, because once he caught that first one, he was talking so fast and telling us about how great this rod is and how many fish he catches on it, along with past stories about the fish he boated with it.  I just had to laugh, because previous to that fish, there was no talk from him about any of these great things he has done, and you could hardly tell he was fishing at all.  Ah, the greatness of that first fish of the year. 

Throughout the next several hours we took turns hoisting fish in the boat, snapping photos of many of them and chuckling at each other the entire time.  We were amazed to find that we had that stretch of the river relatively to ourselves for most of the day.  Occasionally we had some anglers drift by, but they didn't fare to well and were quick to look for new water.  It is amazing how precise everything has to be when dealing with these river fish.  Many of these boats would watch us land fish after fish, and tried right next to us, but they didn't realize that we weren't just randomly drifting and that we were concentrating on certain features on the bottom.  If you weren't concentrating on the dips and breaks exactly, you weren't catching anything.  Current and structure is everything at times, and once we figured out the days pattern, it was pretty fast and furious.

Like the previous outing that I had on this stretch, the fish were hitting jigs and minnows or plastics.  depending on the current speed in each pocket, we were able to use as small as 1/4 ounce jigs and at times had to go with 3/8 ouncers.  The preffered depth for these guys were in 15 - 17 ft of water.  The only difference from my trip on Monday evening, was that the water level had dropped about 2 1/2 ft making our old spots no good and requiring new ones to be found.  Always fun when the conditions are changing and you have to continously adapt.  I love a good challenge.

While on the river we managed to land about 50 Walleyes ranging from 3 1/2 lbs and down.  No giants on this trip, but the average size was great, and the 16 inchers were leaping in the boat.  Like I always say when fishing the river, you never know what you are going to catch, and this trip was no different.  While the majority were walleyes, we also landed sauger, crappies, smallmouth bass, carp and the most insanely gross looking creature that I have ever seen.  I'll let you be the judge on this thing.  It swims, has gills, four legs, can move around on land or water and is horribly disgusting to look at.  I know the name of this creature, but if you can guess what Dusty named it, I will give you a free guide trip of your choice.  You may have to be creative on this one to get it right.  Post your guess on the bottom of this story under comments.  Any guess is a good one.  Remember...Be creative...Good luck!

After we had enough catch and release we decided to head back home to get a few fish for our fish fry.  With weather so darn nice, and the entire day set aside for fishing and telling jokes, it was an easy decision to put the boat right back into the water.  We launched the boat into lake Waconia, and were hoisting panfish into the boat in no time.  It was a great way to end the day and gave us some good fish to munch on for dinner.  An awesome way to end  a great day.  Dang I love when a good plan comes together.  Thanks guys!

Can you imagine flipping this into the boat thinking it was a walleye and almost grabbing it without noticing what it was (heehee, Bails did)!  CAN YOU GUESS THE NAME????