lol i had soo many crankbaits that i had to seperate them into 3 regular size plano tackleboxes and theres still about 3 cranks per slot... doesnt help that dickssportinggoods send out coupons and rewards points for buying things and stuff. i have $20 coming in from dicks. prob get the shimano curado before it all sells out with it.
So I haven't gone fishing in a week or two and it feels like months..... I did convince the wife that it is in everyone's best interest to set me free in the boat in Park Rapids this weekend for a fishing only get away! So I am stoked to spend as many hours in the boat as my battery charge and gas tanks will allow. Picked up some new lures to test out... 1. DT16 - Bluegill colored Rapala 2. Brush Hogs - Chartreuse w/ Pumpkin flakes + Black/Blue w/ Red and Blue flakes... both seasoned with Salt Solution 3. 4 blade spinners - White/Gold + White/Silver 4. Colorado double spinner - Black w/ Red streak on skirt 5. 2 blade chartreuse spinner Anyone else have any luck fishing this weekend or last week?
Muskie fishing is still something that i have never done... I would like to try it sometime. Good luck on Tonka.
Thanks man. Per the side of the lake we're launching from, I'm pretty comfortable being able to pull two decent Bass and two fair Pike, but after that, it's a crap-shot. I don't have late-mid season eye spots and Muskies can be tough. We'll see what happens
ive had pretty good results on eyes at nokomis. suprisingly caught a few good sized smallies as well as the usual lmb. no muskies there yet.
no on the canoe. we caught the smallies and lmb under the cedar bridge and the eyes on the east end of the lake.
Thanks man. Our total weight was 9lbs and change, so they were right around 4# each. I didn't get a measure.
Well I did get a good amount of fishing in this weekend. Friday night I was able to fish from about 7pm - Dark. I just stuck with my white and gold spinner and casted the reed line. It produced a few small bass and a small northern. But you can't complain about the view. Saturday got a late start to the morning, I choose to sleep in. 9am hit the water. Picked up only Bass until about 1pm when I went in for a break and battery charge on the trolling motor. 2pm went back out and trolled for a while due to the time of day. Picked up a few notherns, they were all in the high teens to low 20's for length. I was running a DT16 trolling between 30ft and 20ft (estimate because i lack a graph). Then i picked up this guy! Saturday mid-day I almost got caught in a bad storm. I had my back to the weather and turned around to change lures... then i noticed the wall cloud, black skies and lightening. I was on the other side of the lake and had a ways to boot back. I have to say it was not a cool feeling I had in my stomach. The lightening started getting too close for comfort on my haul back and it even made me put on my life jacket... but i survived. After the storm blew over i went back out and produced a few small bass again. Everything seemed to be in the 2 - 3 pound range. Then my stupid cousin called and wanted to go wakeboarding, and instead of tell them next time I left my fishing line @ 7pm ... pulled them for an hour and picked up a guest on the boat to fish until sundown. The guest was drunk, spooled the bait caster a few time because he had never used one, after wasting a lot of time pulling out his bird's nests I just said F' it and we trolled the rest of the night. I picked up a big one, but never saw it or got it in the boat, it just toyed with me for 2 minutes and then spit out my rapala.... by far the best fight all weekend too. Still kicking myself for being nice and leaving the fishing spot. The fish were biting and I was up there to fish... oh well I guess I learned my lesson. Sunday morning came too early.... Sunrise was cool looking as I moved fishing spots.... Picked up Bass all day today (Sunday)... no northerns on the line from 6am - 1:30pm.... which is crazy for my lake. Usually you catch northerns no matter what you are fishing for. Fishing was hard this morning. I tossed a brush hog into reeds and pads for a while with nothing to show for it. I switched to scum frogs because the lake was still glass. I had a few bass jump and take the lure but I couldn't set the hook on them. Wind picked up and I was salty from still being skunked for the day so I trolled out of the bay and into the main lake. Still picked up nothing so I switched to deeper water. I worked the deep weedline for a while casting a 16ft diver, and nothing produced. Headed into a bay and started to fish shallow. I fished docks and pads with a bush hog for a while. I had one fish bite the bottom of the lure and a few follows but still nothing in the boat. I switched to a perch swimbait and still had nothing to show for. Then @ 10am I switched to a white and silver 4 blade spinner. I started to pick up bass left and right. Not sure if it was the time of day or just that they were really that picky, but the spinner produced. Took a picture of a small bass, felt i needed something. I had been holding out for nice fish but I guess 3lbs was my weekend limit. This guy was small but still fun to catch.
I am fishing the Park Rapids area. The water is so high on my lake that I can't fit under the bridge to get to my good fishing spots. I haven't picked up any big bass this year. They all seem to be in the 2 - 3 lb range.
darn edit button. But i caught most of my big ones in the metro lakes area. wirth, cedar, and nokomis
My lake is fished pretty hard. Usually I have to drive up river to the less active, less desirable lakes which averages 12 ft deep. There are lots of nice 4 - 5 lb bass hiding in the pads on that lake. But due to water levels I am forced to fish my own lake. My lake has big fish it is just a lot harder to fish. They sit deep and there isn't a lot of stand out features. Add that to not having a graph and it makes it more difficult. Usually I fish the bays and the undeveloped parts of the lake. 1 - 3 lb bass i pretty common. There is usually a good amount of northerns in the 17 - 29" range.
Sounds like a great weekend and awesome pics!!! Do you recall what the surface water temp up there was? I'm going to be at a family members cabin east of Mille Lacs in the next couple of weekends and I'll be fishing out of their pontoon as much as I can. My ******* boat still isn't ready. It would be if I wouldn't have picked up the 09 so I guess I'm ok with it. The trailer hitch was ordered today so once that gets here, I really hope to have enough time to get it to the shop for a once over and maybe use it once or twice before the water freezes over. My fall is busy, though, so I might just drain the carbs and wait until spring... I have a little side gig that takes ALL of my late September and the first three weekends in October and by then it's a crap shot as to how much open water we'll have left. The Muskies really turn on then, and the Walleyes fatten up, though...
yeah i just bought a cheap little humminbird piranhamax fishfinder for finding structure and its definitely helped me alot in finding good structure in deep waters to fish!
Ted I don't have a graph so I have no idea what the water temp was at. After labor day I am no longer going up to Park Rapids this year because we are doing some work on the cabin. If you do get the boat in the water let me know, I'll be ready to fish seeing as how I have maybe 2 weeks left with my boat.
anybody here do any catfishing? Lately i have switched from my usual bass fishing to that and i been looking on the map for good places down the mississippi(spl?). I did mange to land one about 40lbs the other week.
Wow, nice work LVT! That's a beast! We did fairly well up north this past weekend. I got out at about 7am on Sunday morning - in a pontoon boat with three not-so-much experienced fisherman and had a pretty good morning. ~16 Pike ranging in size from 12"-25", 5-6 Bass (nothing over 2lbs) and 2 Walleye. Everything was outside of a 10' weed line pulling either jointed, rattling Rapalas or a white spinner bait. Good times. My cousin had never trolled before and had not caught a Walleye since he was 8.
Glad you had a good time fishing this weekend. I noticed they are sitting deeper too, everything I pulled from the shore - 10ft range of water was small. Were you trolling with a white spinner or casting? I didn't really get a chance to "fish" this weekend. I had the in-laws in from STL so I was on husband duty all weekend. I did take them out for 2 boat rides and tossed a line out as we trolled around the lake. Nothing produced but we were going faster than i normally troll. I tried a lipless crank and my 16DT rapala. One thing that did happen was my eyelit on the end of my rod popped out. So I dropped it off @ Broco's cabin on the way out of town for some repair. He is going to rip out my eyelits and replace them all with micro eyelits. There was even some talk about a new handle, but we will see what happens. Thursday night I am headed back up north and Friday morning Broco and myself will be on the boat. I am stoked to try out the newly modified rod!
We were pulling Rapala JSR05p's (Perch and Hot Tiger) 2" 1/4 oz. Jointed-rattling raps straight out the back and on the deep side. My bro-in-law wanted to troll the spinner so I kept him on the shallow side and it worked out great. The spinner bait pulled more than the Raps. That's awesome! Post a few pics when its done! I wish I had time to build a few rods.
Same speed as the Rapalas, 2.2mph. Right on the weed edge 6-8' or so. You ever trolled spinner baits? works GREAT mid-season when you have 1-3' between the weeds and the top of the water.
I am going to try it this weekend. I have never trolled spinners but I do have a perfect bay / bays to try it out in. My open part of the lake doesn't have weeds that high, but the bays I could see that working well!
SWEET! You'll get a feel for the right speed per the weight of the spinner. Good luck man! We're out on Minnetonka tomorrow from 6-9p going for 6 bass. There are two more tournaments until the end of the year - this one and one more and we're sitting in 3rd out of 17 teams. Any and all good luck vibes, thoughts and prayers are appreciated!!! It's the home stretch!
Oh, one tip - you'll (usually) want to be a few inches above or just tickling the tops of the weeds. Pull with 30+lb braid and if you get weeds rip them off by snapping the rod tip toward the bow 3-4 times and keep going.
Good luck out on the water. I am usually running 30lb braid on my rod anyways. Hey has anyone tried the clear braid yet? I was thinking about picking up some for next year.
I used to run FireLine and thought it was the best thing evar and have since switched to PowerPro and am much happier with it. Before I switched, however, I had a few spools of the old, white FireLine Crystal and wasn't a big fan. It wasn't clear - it looked like dental floss in the water so that use was short lived. They may have changed it since then, though.
Huh, this says that is is "clear" I wonder if it is the same thing that you were using. I currently am running green power pro
Today was a good day of fishing. Woke up early in went out with BroCo On long lake in park rapids. Last weekend I left my rod with BroCo, I had broken an eyelit on the tip of my rod. So this morning I got my rod back from him. He had fitted my rod with new micro guides. On top of that he built a new handle for me wrapped it in carbon fiber. Then to sweeten the deal he went with a black and yellow theme for the wrap. So not only does my rod look cool, but damn I can cast far now! We had a good time fishing and the rod rebuild totally exceeded my expectations. I also went out in the afternoon and tried trolling with that spinner bait. It works really well to do that, I stayed in the bays and produced a few northerns. I also did some casting along the weed lines. Again I was completely shocked at the changes that BroCo was able to do to my rod. It seriously feels like I'm casting almost twice is far as before. The battery is on the charger now and I'm looking forward to sunrise tomorrow morning!
^^^^^ I'm glad you liked the rod, it was a blast fishing both Friday and Saturday. I'll swing by early next week after I get my final tune from Nuke!! Can't wait to feel the E85!
Yeah the rod is great! Today we are going out for the moon bite? I guess the moon comes up at 2:55pm or something like that. My cousin was told an hour prior and an hour after the moon rise and set should be good for northerns. He had good luck yesterday. So we are going out in a few hours to see what we can find. He is still hoping for his 10+ lb northern. His muskie fishing friends swear by the moon theory in late summer/fall.
no pics of this tweaked rod? I broke my first St. Croix last week. Sucks, but it's already on the way back to WI to get warrantied out. I wish I had time to build a few rods - maybe this winter. I could always build them while I'm brewing... hahah.
I need to get some better shots of the rod. I have a few cell phone pics but they don't do the rod justice. The moon bite was good 2pm - 5pm! We picked up a ton of northern trolling on Saturday. We hit more than a few rain storms in the 3 hours we were out on the lake, and we also ran out of gas when the worst one hit, but it was worth it. We were fishing out of my cousin's 14ft bench seat boat and it was a blast. I am happy we had ores because we had to row back in the rain and the wind really picked up as soon as we ran out of gas. I found that a brown Chatterbait w/ green (chartreuse) frog legs and gold blade was working best. My cousin swapped out a lot of Storm Swimbaits and Rapalas.. but I was able to out fish everything trolling with my Chatterbait. We were trolling @ 8ft - 15ft and keeping the lures towards the top 1ft - 3ft of water. Water clarity is about 20ft. Picked up a lot of northers in the high teens to low 20's range. I also picked up a Silver Pike, which is a pretty cool looking northern! Sunday went out trolling again, similar depth and lure. Produced fish the same amount of fish again and one mid size bass.
We'll be out on Waconia for a "pick-six" tournament tonight! We're coming into the final tournament in 3rd place out of 17 teams! I'm really looking forward to this one!
Finished in 6th last night, but were able to hold a final position of 3rd place for the year which is a decent little pay-out. Four muskies were caught last night, one team hooked into two of them, lucky bastards. and I'd never seen this happen before. He'z a hungry little guy.
Proceed with caution. images may not be too graphic for ppls to see. caught a 35in pike today, but was on the dock and couldnt land it before this happened. went home because for some reason my pliers were not in my bag. cut off the hook and forcebley poked it through and pulled it out after 30mins. but im glad my custom painted crankbait is working. lol this is my third pike on this crankbait!
it...was not at all. but wasnt as bad when a musky toothed the same thumb and took like 2 weeks to heal. this one had no blood nor barely any after pain im also extremely glad the pike came unhooked when i got hooked, or it would have been a whole nother story...but yeah i hope to catch something other than pikes with these cranks. ive recently begun painting a bunch for myself and hopes to start a small side biz.
Damn dude! Yeah, be GLAD that fish got itself off of the hook when it got you. After last year's opener, I have come to REALLY respect a fish with a Rapala sticking out of it's mouth. I got into a 20" pike, flipped it into the boat reached down to grab the lip of the Rap as I'd done 3000 times before. The fish Flipped up and stabbed me - and then kept on flopping and flipping in the boat. I pushed it to the floor and stepped on it - screaming the whole time. After letting my buddy try to push it through with his leatherman and having no luck and LOTS AND LOTS OF PAIN, I had to come off the lake, drive 40 minutes to the hospital get it nummed up and pulled out backwards. The doc stuck the needle into my thumb and I could feel it right behind my finger nail, on the wrong side. He let that sit for 10 minutes tried to pop it through 3x and then finally tried to back it out and POP, out it came.
