2007 Minnesota Fishing Opener

Another Minnesota fishing opener is in the books!

I don't know exactly where I would rate this years opener for team Trophy Encounters.  We had an interesting weekend, and a definite lack of serious fishing.  The only hours that we really logged this weekend were from Midnight to about 11:00 on Saturday.  We ran up to Mille Lacs at the last minute on Friday, and figured we would just go wherever the wind blew us for the weekend. 

Our annual midnight trip remains in tact, and we hit the south end of Mille Lacs for the early start.  We put a few in the box, and Mike threw back a dandy.  We trolled crankbaits over the 4 - 6 ft gravel areas that had produced in the past, and found our fish.  Our battery died on us and cut the outing short, which took us back into town.  We drove to the north end to meet up with some buddies for the daybreak bite.  This is where our weekend gets a little bit more interesting.  THE AMOUNT OF PEOPLE THAT FISH THE NORTH END OF MILLE LACS ON OPENER IS RIDICULOUS!!!!  The lines at the accesses run for miles at times, and waiting for multiple hours to launch your boat is not out of the question.  Not exactly what gets me excited, but that's how it goes.  We fished the typical north end sand, and yes the fish were biting, but it just doesn't have quite the same spark or excitement when you land the walleyes.  There is something about working and finding out a pattern, and then pulling in the walleyes and feeling like you accomplished something cool that gets me going.  I may sound weird for saying this, but I found little enjoyment drifting aimlessly across a sand break with little bottom feature, catching walleyes at random with the other 2,000 boats that were doing the same thing.  It just isn't very rewarding.  Yes it is awesome for the folks that only get out once in a while, but if you are looking for a fun and rewarding challenge, this is not it.  Sure some areas may have been better, but for the most part everything that everyone was doing was working, and if you drifted between 12 - 25 feet of water for more than 30 minutes, you would have a fish in the boat.  I don't care if you have never fished walleyes before.  The next person who rants and raves about their kick butt excursion on Mille lacs north end sand on opener, you can just nod your head and say congrats, cuz it wasn't tough. 

We stayed until about 11:00 until we got bored and decided to try elsewhere.  We didn't stay until we had our 12 keepers, but left with 8 in the jar and a few picture takers.  We had a nice fish fry in the afternoon, and headed further north to catch up with some buddies and fish a smaller lake for the first time.  This was more to enjoy the evening and have a few laughs.  We definitely had that, cuz while we were putting our boat in the water, Mikey and Jeremy pulled up in their boat, both excited to give us a hand and neither of them thought to tie up their boat.  Good thing Jeremy had his waders to get the floating boat back.

We cruised the lake looking for areas that we will be trying on our annual Memorial Weekend trip.  I do believe that this lake may have some lunker Smallies for our Flukes.  The Gesinger's had 8 walleyes in 2 days of fishing, and didn't start hauling them in until they put the bobbers out and the other gear away.  Nice work guys, and thanks for the laughs.  We came back to the cities and passed on another day on Mille Lacs.  I'll be heading back up there soon to get back on a serious man's walleye bite, and away from all the traffic, SHeeSh, I forgot what that big lake can be like on opener, and I don't think I'll be going back next year.  No offense, but It just isn't my cup of tea!  Heading out to the local lakes this week, and I'll be giving some pics and stories soon, Let me know if you want to hit the water. Fish On!

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????

Pre-Spawn Willies!

Downtown Twin Cities???

Walleyes???

Yeah Baby!!!

Tim and I got the warm clothes on and muscled up the courage to sit on open water for a couple of hours yesterday evening.  After all, the temp was 40 degrees, and the forecast for the rest of the week calls for snow, snow and more snow.  So to cure the itch until the warmer weather arrives, we decided to jerk a few lips.  The two of us went back and forth with our hot streaks, and joked at each others misses for nearly 2 1/2 hours of awesome spring walleyes on the Mississippi.  It was crazy to see the water temps in the mid 30's and have the walleyes hitting the jig so hard, but neither of us were complaining. 

 The presentation and pattern was simple.  Jig and minnow (until we ran out) and plastics.  When dealing with river fish, it is all about the current, and when you find the fish in this dirty water, you have to literally be within inches of their face before they see the bait and hit it.  All of our fish came from an area that covered about two boat lengths.  They were stuck in a little underwater break in 15- 17 ft of dirty water.  We had this area all to ourselves, and just hung their until we ran out of daylight.  I started the day by boating the first 8 walleyes, laughing continuously at Dingy, only to see him throw the next 6 in the boat and hearing him chirp back at me.  The rest of the evening we went back and forth netting fish for each other anywhere from 1lb up to about 4-5 lbs.  It was crazy, the males were fertilizing everything in the boat, and the females we caught looked like they had just swallowed some footballs.  These fish were active and eating exactly what we were offering before they do their yearly ritual.  The only snag in our day was the camera battery that died very early in the fish catching parade.  A great trip on the water, with some interesting and different scenery for a change. 

Love it!  Fish On!

Did Somebody Say Open Water???

Check out this sweet view of a foggy morning on the Mighty Mississippi.  I was not along on this particular trip, but I just had to post this.  The boys that made the journey to Red Wing found themselves as usual, with hundreds of other eager fisherman.  The only problem was that they didn't find quite as eager fish!  The recent report was that there had been a few biters in the previous days, but everything can change in seconds when you fish the rivers in spring.  On this particular day, the dam in Red Wing was let wide open to allow water to flow through, which had its normal effects and turned the fish off completely.  It's a good excuse for my buddies to bring home as to why they didn't catch em'  on their first attempt of the year (heeeheee).  Don't worry Mike and Sean, I won't tell everybody it was you two who were down there!

One of my favorite parts about fishing the river is that you never know what you are going to catch or snag, and while they didn't catch the walleyes, they did manage to haul in a rare Sturgeon to take a few photos.  It wasn't enormous, but always fun to fight.

In all honesty, the river can absolutely awesome this time of the year.  It is a good chance to get out on the open water before the lakes loose all of the ice.  The numbers and size of the walleye and sauger can be spectacular, with many of our trips last season netting 50 - 80 fish per day.  I will be getting my lines wet in the next few days, and posting my stories when I can.  If you or anybody you know would like to be part of the stories, get in contact with me soon to set up a day that will work best.  The action will be heating up very soon, and it doesn't last long. Until next time,  FishOn!

The Grand Slam of Ice Fishing!

I literally have so many stories and pictures from the past 4 days of fishing that I don't really know where to start.  Bails, Mikey and myself (aka: The Tripod) left this past Thursday in search of the grand slam of ice fishing.  I call it the grand slam because we target my 4 favorite species through the ice and they are all trophy caliber fish.  The list consists of Monster Bluegills, Slab Crappies, Big Bellied Jumbo Perch, and Fat Bellied Walleyes.  During our trip we fished all of these species and managed to try 9 different lakes on our quest.

The first on our list was the Slab Crappies, and boy did we ever strike gold.  The small puddle in the forest that we fished is one of my favorite holes to fish because we commonly catch crappies up to nearly 2 pounds.  If you have ever caught the giants in red lake then you know what size of fish I am talking about.  When the bite is going on this particular lake it doesn't take long to wear your arm out, which is exactly what we experienced.  We caught several large crappies over a pound with some going over 1 1/2 pounds.  We kept a nice meal for our first fish fry, and threw all the larger fish back for next time.  This very tiny lake can handle very little pressure, and since I have never seen another soul on it while I have been out there, I like to let the big ones grow even larger. 

After catching our crappies for the day we switched to a new lake that produces many species for us while we target the Monster Bluegills.  We set out our tip-ups with shiners and ran back and forth chasing the pike while we played around with the giant sunnies.  Since we had our meal of crappies already in the pail, we decided to throw everything back and just enjoyed the sight of every sunfish that managed to cover our entire hands.  We didn't catch any pounders, but had several up to 3/4 pound, which for a sunfish, is truly a giant and a very rare bread.  While catching our sunfish we chased a tip-up nearly every 10 - 15 minutes and caught several northern pike.  We also caught Largemouth bass, and a few BBJP's in this short afternoon on the water.  All I have to say is that We nearly caught everything on our list in the first half day of fishing for our trip.  A great start to say the least.

Day 2 of our excursion took us to Red Lake to get in on the Walleye bite and to cross another specie off our list to tackle.  Since we had all the crappie action from the day before, we concentrated on strictly catching the Walleyes instead of searching for the huge crappies that most people chase out there.  We fished in the well below zero temps all day and caught several nice walleyes.  We landed these fish by getting as far away from anybody as we could and fishing the shoreline break in 11-12 feet of water.  On this large swamp once you hit 14ft of water, there is no structure until you hit shore on the other side.  It can make things frustrating when sitting miles out on an endless flat, so we stuck to the shoreline break which is actually pretty steep if you go out of JR's resort on the SouthWest side of the fishable water.  We caught in the neighborhood of 30 walleyes and had fairly steady action in both the morning and evening.  The only downside to our day was our inability to catch up with our buddies on the big lake.  Theo, Todd and their crew were also on the water, but with our horibble phone service and the fact that Theo managed to drop his phone down the ice hole, we were unable to find them.  Sorry fellas, Next time I guess!

Day 3 had us chasing the awesome Perch bite that can be had on a few of the lakes in the area.  We fished hard and tried 3 different lakes before we decided that this wasn't going to be the weekend for the Big Bellied Jumbo Perch.  We caught many perch, but they just didn't have the size that we were after.  A couple of the lakes that I have done well on, have very drastic up and down times.  The thing that makes it worth trying is that when they do hit, they are fast and furious, and they are truly massive.  Although we didn't strike gold with them, I will definitely be trying again next time up.  We switched gears and headed down another logging road for the afternoon bite for the Bull Gills.  We had a great time catching many large fish and hole hopping around all afternoon.  This lake is my absolute favorite, and didn't let us down on this trip either.  We didn't break the pound mark, but came very close several times.  Awesome! Awesome! Awesome bluegill Bite!

The last day of our trip we decided to try another great Bluegill lake for the morning before heading home,  We tangled around with many more large Bulls, and closed the trip in style.  In the entire time of fishing, we caught trophy fish in all the categories that we wanted.  The perch were a little slower than normal but we still had some in the BBJP size category.  In my opinion this is the best kind of ice fishing that can be had and with the large variety, every day is a new experience.  If you haven't been on a trip like this, I definitely recommend it as one that you need to put on your list.  If you or someone you know would like to experience this excitement let me know soon to set up the ice fishing trip of a lifetime.

More pictures from the trip may be seen in the numerous photo albums. 

The Grand Slam of ice fishing is AWESOME!  Thanks Mike and Sean!