Did I mention I'm tired of winter? I'd love nothing more than to jump in the truck with Wahoo, drive south to the first open water we can cast in and re-aquaint myself with the fishes, any fish.... However, the early season in WI is a month and a half away and I guess I'll just have to suck it up. I'm not much for the winter fishing season in MN, especially with all this snow on the ground, getting around on the streams would be a chore and I'm a terrible midge fisherman anyway...
My love/hate relationship with winter/ice fishing has taken on more hate than love this winter. The fishing has been pretty poor, our usual harvest spot is overrun with micro perch and only when your willing to stay till 10pm is it worthwhile, to catch a couple crappies anyway. Last weekend 6 of us ventured to Mille Lacs for the one overnight weekend of the winter. My expectations were not high to say the least, it's that doldrums time of the season and I was just hoping for enough perch to bag and cook for Jennifer. We were greeting lakeside by pea soup fog, finding the shack was a total mess and eventually we had to run back to the lodge to get an escort. Once we found our shack we realized we had been stuck in the no man's land of shack placement, literally 1/2 mile from any structure and 1/4 mile from any humanity, thanks Hunters Resort for the shit sammy. Despite the shitty location, I had not lost hope, yet....
We pulled up the shacks on my utility trailer, which turned out to be another mistake. On our way to 3 mile bar I noticed the right rear wheel throwing up a ton of snow. I alerted Fred who was at the wheel and went out for an inspection... Sweet, broken leaf spring, that's a helluva good start. This group of 6 mustered just enough ingenuity to make a fix with load straps, chunks of 2x4's and lots of heavy lifting. Surprisingly we only had to make one more adjustment and we managed to get this thing home to the garage in one piece.
Tally for the weekend: 3 perch, 1 small eelpout. I could have done better at the park. or maybe even in the front yard for that matter. It is nice to get away but I think my overnight ice shack days are done, makes for a pretty expensive beer drinking outing.
Way to go Pack! Had to throw that in there, I barely made it home for kick off. The later stages of the game had me on pins and needles but Rogers found a way to win. Pretty exciting stuff for this packer fan.
The big Boat is gone and now in the hands of a nice fella from Perham MN. I'm turning my attention to finding a jon boat with a 20" transom, which will someday have a 30hp jet hanging off it. I think in the short term I'll add a small prop motor and am really getting excited about fishing the smaller waters and finding some virgin muskie spots on the upper croix/apple/zumbro and a couple other local waters. The small waters get ignored by most, but mostly because of the boat choice. I have realized a fancy big boat does not make a good angler and I think I can make more of my season with success on less pressured waters.
Gotta roll, go bait the squirrels who live in the eaves to come out so I can blast them, city style with sneaky high powered pellet gun shots out the window. little bastards are keeping me up at night. Urban Hunting at it's finest. might have to take a bunny or two as well, they have eaten my bridal veil bush down to the nubs...mmm bunny stew.
think warm thoughts.
BigPikeMike
