Have you ever been to the Lake of the Woods? I haven’t up until a week ago. Most people I know go there every winter religiously to cash in on the hot walleye fishing the lake has to offer. When spring rolls around you hear of the Rainy River and the trophy’s that come out of there like panfish it seems. The opener rolls around and you hear some LOTW talk but when summer gets into swing you hear less and less about the area. How can it be one of the biggest hard water destinations and just another lake in the summer? Maybe I am wrong but all of the ice fishermen I know try to make a trip every winter. Why aren’t these people making the journey in the summer? I needed to find out so I made a solo trip to Lake of the Woods. I left on a Monday morning for some midweek fishing hoping for some peace and quiet. I was lucky enough to stay at the Sportsman’s Lodge. I say lucky because from the moment I walked through the door and up and till the moment I left I was treated like a king. I asked then owner Gregg Hennum about two weeks prior to my trip what I will need to bring and he said just yourself, we will take care of you here. Well he was right; they took care of me and the group of 10 guys that I was placed to fish with. Lake of The woods is famed the walleye capitol of the world and I always knew that, so that makes me wonder, if I enjoy fishing walleyes so much then why have I never came here before. I still can’t figure it out but I know that after this trip I will be making many more trips to Lake of the Woods. The fishing I experienced and the hospitality were both outstanding.
I’ve been on hundreds of fishing trips throughout my life and none of them have ever run this smoothly; probably because everything was done for me. At 8 am I walked onto a fully loaded boat with rods and reels rigged and ready to go. I was put on a boat with 5 guys I had never met before and the guide. The boat was big with plenty of room for each of us to get comfortable. Below was a cabin area with a room to sit down or even take a nap if needed. The boats also are fully equipped with a bathroom down below. We had it all. The guide was Eric Lindquist commonly know around these parts as “Snagâ€. He never did tell us how or why he got that name, but we asked. I think I heard that question about 5 times from the same guy through out the two days. He did say that years ago some of the old timers just started calling him that but that was about as much of the story as we could get. The atmosphere was comfortable as everyone was friendly which made it nice for me as I was alone. We fished all day and shared past stories and conversation through out the day. The fishing was incredible. Whether we down rigged or trolled with spinner rigs we caught fish. It didn’t matter if we used crawlers or leeches and it certainly did not matter what color crank bait we trolled because they all caught fish equally. After an hour of fishing the first morning we had 21 fish in the boat not counting the ones we threw back. That will give you an idea of how the fish were biting. After the two days I think our boat was the only one that didn’t catch a big fish. When I say big fish I am talking about one over 28 inches. Knowing that we were a little disappointed so our Guide “Snag†brought us to one of his big fish spots before the end of our last day on the water. It was a deep gravel point that has been known to hold bigger fish. He rigged up the down riggers and we began to work the point back and forth. It reminded me of the movie jaws for some reason. Everyone in the boat got a lot quieter and even the guy that had been sleeping in the cabin below all day came up to hopefully get a chance at landing one of these Lake of The Woods monsters. (I wanted to put a picture of him sleeping in the paper so I could really show you how comfortable these boats can be but he really didn’t like the idea so we won’t print it.) We quietly sat and watched the rods and we made our way back and forth over the “zoneâ€. We marked fish every time we passed but could not get one to go. After a few more moments of suspense we finally hooked into one. It was short lived as it got off right away. About 5 minutes later another rod popped and I jumped up and grabbed it preparing to land my 30 inch walleye. After about 10 seconds I knew that wasn’t the case. It was a decent 16 inch eater that we threw back. With the boat still quiet and a couple guys focused on the graph another rod popped again. This time Bob Wetzel from Buffalo Mn grabbed the pole. Right away we knew it was a big one. She was taking drag and putting up a pretty good fight. I grabbed the net in anticipation of having a hand in landing a trophy. After a few minutes she surfaced! Wow was it a nice fish. After getting her in we measured the fish and she was an even 29 inches! The slot on Lake of the Woods is 19 ½ to 28 inches with one over 28 keep able. I think Bob made a good choice and let her swim another day. Hopefully I can make it back to catch her or her sister who I heard is a whopping 32 inches! These big fish catches are common and I’m sure that if we would of requested a big fish hunt we would of gotten into a lot more of these. That day another boat in the sportsman’s fleet landed and released a 32 inch walleye. The day before I heard of a 28 inch fish and the list goes on. That is another thing that is great about this lake. There are a lot of big ones out there. I was talking to our Guide Eric about the big fish and he says July and August are his favorite months for finding the big ones. After guiding on the lake for 8 years he has ran into a lot of fish that are over the 28 mark and a lot of them came from trolling crank baits in the summer heat. Maybe next time I will get my trophy. Besides the excellent fishing it was an experience in itself just staying at the lodge and experiencing their hospitality. The fish fry’s were awesome. On the first day of fishing we stopped off at Sportmans Lodge on Oak Island for a shore lunch. Two of the guides; our very own, and Darryl Vacura put together a heck of a meal for us. I could not stop eating it was so good. After 4 hours of non stop fish catching we were hungry and our appetites were satisfied. Another cool thing they did for us was at the end of the day we docked the boat and they told us to meet up in the bar in about a half hour for our fish. I guess I wasn’t sure what was going on. I thought maybe they were going to give us our days catch. Well we went up and sat down and grabbed a beverage. After a few minutes we were served with two giant platters of freshly cooked fish. Now that is what I call service. Like I said before the experience was outstanding! Everyone at the lodge went above and beyond to make sure we all had an excellent stay and we did.
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Topic: Walleye Capitol of the World (Read 3148 times)
