Wanderer

After this rain and heat I’m seeing shrooms pop up around the house like crazy. Just looked out and saw a few new clusters. Yes, my yard is shady and often wet.

Good find! Maybe they’ll come a little quicker now that the mosquitoes have finally reached the annoying mass stage?! They’re ridiculous now.

@Eyefishalot Are you fishing a touney?

Fixed it for ya.

I’m ALMOST embarrassed to admit this but it’s too good of news not to share. My leeches that I bought and fished with on Memorial weekend (half pound) are still alive and well in my 13 quart cooler in the beer fridge - with one water change after that weekend. The water is still crystal clear and they seem to be back in hibernation mode. One may be dead or about to be dead. I’ll have to warm em for a few hours I think before I use them. And the 19 quart was our boat cooler, in place of the Igloo, for our Canadian trip last week. 13-15 hour days in 90 degree heat. We packed 4 sammies, snacks and about 8 bottles of water, half of them frozen each day. The frozen bottles doubled as our ice. The sammies were still cool at the end of the day when we were dying to get the ice to melt in the last bottles of water to drink them! The cooler stayed dry inside and the yogurt covered cranberries didn’t melt. I consider this this to be the end of the testing phase. I’m hooked.

Take the no wake route. Believe me it’s faster. Done it many times.

How deep were the trout running? We heard ultra deep on Crow to 30 ft. The 30 ft number came from people actually catching them. Thanks for the pics! I like the fly rod smallie.

I should’ve looked closer - I have an eyes open pic too. Tough to tell sometimes on my phone screen.

Quick recap: Weather was too darn “nice”! Upper 80’s - 90’s; no wind to speak of; mostly sunny. Water temps were anywhere from 64 - 71 depending on location and day. We looked the lake over from end to end, marking up our map and returning to some places where we saw fish either later the same day or a couple days later. We could literally see the transition from spawn to post spawn happening during our stay. Being new to both muskie fishing and that lake, we spent time in dead water as much as good water but feel like we got a pretty good handle on how to go about setting up a more efficient return visit. It was a lot work and long hours but I’d go back this weekend if I could so I must’ve enjoyed it. A few pics as hoped for:

We had no problems but only brought 10 extra gallons over. We fished 5 days, pretty much running wherever we wanted and ended with 7 gallons remaining in the boat. So, we burned 30 gallons of fuel in a 1785 Lund with 90 hp Mercury 4 stroke. I thought that was pretty good!

I’ll give ya that one too. Of my 4 “legends” the first two were at the Coon Rapids Dam back when you could fish almost anywhere. On the west side tight to the corner of the wall was a bit of an eddy. One week apart to the hour (6 am) I hooked the beasts on a crawler. The first time I got the fish coaxed down to the rocks for landing it. Still hadn’t seen it after a true 30 minute fight. I got to see a boil on the surface from its tail, something like 3 feet or more behind where the line entered the water - right before the hook popped out. After 30 minutes it was over that quick. The next week the fish just marched right out to what we called “the fence”. It was an instant snag spot some 50+ yards out rumored to be a sunken fence but was probably a tree. No matter, nothing ever came free from it, including that fish I had no control over. We were carp fishers so hard fights were the norm. These two or maybe same one were something else. I think Catfish Hunter. The operator errors were: Fishing a bass tournament on Clearwater with drop shots WAY before drop shots were a thing. We were crushing a school of hawgs. One of those spots the size of your boat or less. We loaded the boat with 4 lb average fish when I hooked this toad that wouldn’t come up enough to see even in that water. My partner/competitor even knew right away it was something he needed to pay attention to and grabbed the net without me asking. The fish was directly under the boat when the breeze caught it and pulled us away from the fish. The fish didn’t move though and my drag was too tight. POP! My partner did the most heads up net man move I’ve ever seen to this date. As soon as the line broke he swung the net over to the other side of the boat and jammed into the water in the hopes the fish was high enough and slow enough for him to get it. Nope, sorry for your loss. Thats the fish that taught me the most about managing my drag. And the last (bear with me): Ely last year I was doodling a 3 inch paddle tail around the edge of a weed bed on a 6.5 foot MH baitcasting rig with 20 lb Power Pro mated by swivel to 20 lb flouro leader to the jig. A light bite and quick vertical hookset turned into fish ripping out of the weeds for about 15 feet then turning around and rocketing back into the weeds at warp speed. Not wanting the fish to bury itself, I thumbed the peeling drag but couldn’t stop it. I thumbed harder till the line broke, not even slowing it down. Hindsight says I shoulda taken my chances with the weeds but the 1.5 second battle didn’t give me enough time gauge what what I was tied into! I liked reading the other actual stories posted so I thought I’d share some details of mine. Good luck out there!

Thanks Duffman. I’m at the all packed up/can’t sleep stage now. Tomorrow at work will be tough to keep any focus. I’m lovin it. Once we hit the border my electronic leash is going off. Hopefully for the whole trip. Hope to have some pics to share for sure.

I have a harder time with the ones I don’t see. I have 4 memorable fights with monsters that stretch back to when I was a kid riding my bike to the river on the weekends to last year in Ely. Each one still gets brought up from time to time by the people who were fishing with me. They’re kinda like legends in our own minds.

Ordered yesterday morning; delivered this afternoon. Now that IS quick! Had to check out the floats and quick swap connectors. I ordered the 7 float package with one of those small floats you mention. I can see how it work well for what you were doing. I picked up some of the line through floats also, as I’ve used them in the past and been happy. What I was hoping for is the quick swap connectors being the same for the weights, floats and lights. They are. So I can fish the line throughs with braid for the main line (brass grommet on top) and quickly switch to a lighted bobber set up with just a quick cut and retie of the line after adding the quick connector on the bottom and the light on top. It occurred to me how easy it’ll be to switch even the same rod from rigging to float fishing by just adding or removing either another quick connector or just a split shot. So now I have all the weights I need from 1/4 - 2 oz, including bottom bouncers, and multiple size floats with lights for the fam in 1 Plano 3700. And I can leave 4 rods at the dock in the meantime! Yah, I’m diggin this!

8 years, eh? Yeah, I had no idea they’ve been out that long! But I’m not an ardent walleye guy anyway. That could change a little in the future now. I ordered straight off the website but see they are carried in stores. There’s the lightweight and heavyweight kit plus the bottom bouncers. I ordered the lightweight kit and bottom bouncer kit to 2 oz also. It’ll be so much cleaner and easier to have a cluster of rods in the pontoon WITHOUT bobbers and weights bouncing around and tangling in transit. Keep just the connectors on till we’re ready to fish and just push on the right weight or float for everyone as we bait up.