Mankato Flathead Gathering - June 16th, 2007

[hanson]

Quote:

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How'd it go?

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Do you remember last year, we were all huddled up under IceHouseBob's canopy avoiding the rain.

Same deal!

We had pretty dang good fishing on Friday night but the bigger fish would not show up. Kyle B, Chris B, and myself put 5 flats in the boat (3 for me, 2 for Chris), but they were all under 10lbs. I let 2 more fish run too far and they took me into the wood, and I missed a hookset on a good run as well. Lots of action!

Saturday night was a different story. We fished entirely different spots and put 4 fish in the boat, again all small yet Chris B. pulled big flathead at 12lbs. We had some incredible hits and runs that we could just not sink hooks into.

I think we fished 5 or 6 spots between the 2 nights, and had action at every one, and caught fish at over half of them. So... there was action everywhere, although you had to be on your toes. It was same old same old- short runs, run & drop, run into wood, etc.

Big thanks to Kyle B for putting up with me for the weekend and showing me the "River Keeper's" spots. LOL! Most of the spots we fished are dead obvious spots, and spots I would have never passed by if I was running the boat.

One of these days we'll team up for a big one, these 5-10 pounders are getting old.

A big thanks to everyone who showed up for the talk session on Saturday! I was able to put a few new faces to names from the forums here. I'm pretty confident we'll be doing this again next year, its a good time. But we'll definitely fire the grill up and cook some food before we head out fishing on Saturday.

[hanson]

Tom-

I've got a scary story to share with you.

On Friday night when you guys ran into us, you guys were checking out that fresh snag just upstream from us. Guess what? Another huge freakin' tree dumped over into the river right up from that snag about 2:30am. We heard a weird noise coming from upstream and when I looked up to try and see what it was, the treetops started tipping over into the river. In about 3 seconds, that 100' high Cottonwood was sending waves all over the river. The trunk on that tree had to have been 4' diameter. When it came to a rest, it was halfway out into the river. Lets just say if you guys would have been anchored there, we would have been calling the rescue squad. Scared the dump out of us to think 'what if'.

I'm never going to get that visual out of my mind as I saw the entire thing happen. Unreal!

[harvey lee]

I saw one other huge tree in the river standing like it had grown there and thought, boy if that tipped over it would be bad news. Looks like it was a good thing that we left when we did. Always something when fishing on the river.

[audemp]

I bet a big old flattie is sitting under that tree as we speak! Glad no one was there to get hurt! I wish I could have made it down.

[harvey lee]

That big ole falttie can have it as I didnt feel safe there.

[True]

it was good talking to some of you. My brother and I had a very good night on the river. Our fish went something like this 16 13 39 7 33 7, my best night ever with 2 over 30 and a 13. I'll put pics up when I figure it out.