weekend recap with Dana and Burny

[jigglestick]

this past weekend was the first of I hope at least two weekends with my pals from southern MN this ice season.
we found the fishing to be fair to good and the beer to be even better.
one of the nicer things about winter is that you dont have to worry about your brews getting warm on you

we started out the weekend thursday on winnie.
the big lake has been spitting out some dandy walleyes as of late, but has slowed down a bit.
this was one of the nicer ones caught, but had to go back (to big), caught by burny

with my partner coming up for the weekend, we left he and his co-worker to the house and tried a different lake for some crappies on friday.
this lake isn't known for it's size, but more for numbers. with decent fish if you weed through them.
it was even tight there. we managed twenty fish and we tried hard.

the next day, saturday, weheaded to red lake to try our hand at catchn us some slabs.
we did not set the world on fire, but we kept four walleyes and three crappies. here is Dana with a couple nice ones


my kid loves to fish and had his first all day sit in a portable by himself. he had his heater and lantern, one rod, munchies and sodas, we even had on ice delivery from labs and blackshack, with some fresh hot home made venison brats!
scroungie lost one fish but stuck it out and was rewarded with this nice 14 1/2 inch slab!

he sat there all day for one fish and dint so much as ask when we are leaving.
he just whistled and sang tunes the whole time.

he wanted to take a picture of me with his fish too


that was a fun day!

yesterday, sunday, we went to Bowstring lake to try our hand at some down home slabs.
we covered at least a square half mile. every thing we marked was either a northern or a perch or uninterested. we tried three different spots. a couple by the northwest side, trying our best to stay out of the cluster of houses, and then to the south to try our crappie hole from years past and found that a huge pressure ridge had formed from the inger access, east all the way to mushrat bay >:(
I found out this morning from george at the bait shop in Deer River, that a local guy put his truck in last night about the time we were there. apparantly he tried to get around the ridge to the west and broke through in six feet of water. sounded like he made it, but no details were available.
wish I would have known, we could have helped him out possibly.
we must have been less than a half mile from that spot when we turned to go east along the ridge :-\
I hope he's ok.

we then turned our focus to a hole along the northeast side of the lake for one last try, but the fish I saw on my flasher would not bite anything.
I think I am going to have to re-stock my tackle box with some dupont spinners

I will add in here some pictures of a crack we found on winnie a week ago, and some red lake sunset photos, just as a bonus :)





hey Dana, you left your milk crate and  your extra portable support pole.

good fishing all!

[Bufflehead]

 Great report Jiggle and nice pics too

[sunk1]

Hi Jigglestick, Nice report. glad tohear&see others haveing fun. I spend a week in your neck of the woods. I go to Jessieview resort for a week or so in early to mid June. I think its awsome up there.

[jigglestick]

thanks sunk1!
you are right, it is awesome up here.
the job market can be challenging, but we find a way to keep hanging in there.

[perch destroyer]

I was wondering what happened to that pole. I'll get it the next time I come up hopefully late Feb. or early March. The milk crate was Burny's and wouldn't fit under the lid, so it's your's now. Did the truck go in around that jagged ice? Had a really bad feeling in that area.
 
 

[jigglestick]

nope Dana, that jagged ice was fine. just a bit bumpy to drive on. he tried to go around the pressure ridge to the right. we went to the left.
had we gone right we may very well happened upon him in his sticky situation. maybe coulda helped him out.

the reason I know that jaged ice was fine, was because the jags were thin, like less than two inches thick. that means it all broke up and blew in when the ice was only two inches thick. that was way back in early december.
I'll keep the pole here of course and tell burny thanks for the milk crate.