CURRENT REPORTS

 Fishing Report
August 16, 2008

Today we were deep trolling in the mud off Long Pt.   My partner for today was my father.   Weather was sunny with the wind blowing 10 and picked up to about 15 mph, making for some nice rollers.  We headed north from long point, out about 5 miles into the mud.  We didn't catch a lot of fish but the fish we caught were pretty large.  We fished from about nine o'clock until noon and we only kept one.  We also got 4 other fish that had to go back.  One was 20 inches, one was 23 inches ,one ones 24 inches, and the biggest was 27 inches.  The interesting thing was that my dad caught all the fish today.  The lure of the fish liked today was a number 11 tail dancer, pink on the bottom and green on the top.  I tried every color under the rainbow, at least six or eight different plugs and still nothing, but that's okay.  I'll try harder next time.

 Fishing Report
August 17, 2008

 Today was another special day fishing for me.   Dad had so much fun yesterday that he wanted to bring mom long today.  I met them in a Warroad, the temperature was nice with the winds blowing pretty strong.  We wanted to try some down rigging, we hadn't down rigged for many years and after our success on Saturday pulling cranks in the mud we thought it would be fun to try pull a little bit smaller bait. One of the best ways to pull small crank baits is on a down rigger.  Our plan was to head out near 16 mile reef, but the winds were pretty strong so we decided to pull them along the shoreline and stay out of the wind.  We left the Warroad estates and drove over toward Swift ditch.  Our plan was to pull 2 long lines out the back and drop one down rigger over the side.  Before the second line was set mom started catching fish on the first.  It took nearly 45 minutes to get all three lines in the water.  The hot lure were for today was a blue number nine deep diving Shad Rap trolled with 140 feet of line. We trolled around for about three hours along the south shore concentrating on about 20 feet of water.  We caught a lot of fish of all sizes including walleyes saugers and northerns.  We caught several walleyes over 20 inches and also put back many more are under 15 and we kept six for the freezer.  In all it was a wonderful day.  It's always special and you can fish with your mom and dad and catch a nice bunch of fish.

Scarface

Fishing Report 8/8/08

Lately and I have been having a terrible time with thunderstorms, lightening, rain , heavy winds with big waves and when I could get out I simply could not catch many fish.  So today I decided to try some fishing during the week.  The weather has been pretty miserable on the weekends for the most part, so I decided to take some time off from work and meet my brother Jerry to go out fishing for the day.  We took off from long point a little after eight o'clock and headed for the reefs at Bridges.  I pulled up to the north hump at bridges and worked slowly across the top with the electric trolling motor.  We had five fish before we finished the first trip across the top of the reef.  We worked back slowly across the top and by the time we got back to where we started we had two more, a wonderful start to the day.  We covered most of the top of the reef looking for some better fish, but they were hard to come by.   Jerry schooled me pretty good this morning catching five for every one that I caught.  He was using a jig and a leech,  I was trying of very small silver spinner and a leech, I did switch to a jig after a while but it didn’t help much for but a  jig seemed to be what they wanted.  The fish were mostly small, lots in the 12 to 13 inch range.  We did keep six on the North hump between 15 and 17 inches.  What I lacked in numbers I did make up for in size scoring a real nice 26 inch walleye.

The fishing seemed to slow up for a bit so we made our way over to the South hump at bridges and immediately found fish there as well.  We caught the last two keepers there to fill our limit of walleyes and decided we'd head out to the mud to try some deep trolling to pick up couple of saugers.  We stopped in the middle of nowhere, my secret spot, between Garden Island and Lems Reef.  We trolled in 36 feet of water running about 2.75 mph and we let out anywhere from 125 feet to 150 feet of line.  Most of the fish were caught with about 130 -140 ft or so feet of line.  The crank bait of choice for today was a blue colored # 11 tail dancers.  I have had good luck in this spot at other times.  We thought this would be as good a spot as any to start, we hadn’t trolled for very long when  we started catching fish, the only trouble was they were all too big with the biggest being 27 inches long and really fat.

 We lost track of how many fish we caught most likely somewhere between 20 and 30 with Jerry catching most of them.  The biggest fish we caught were a 20 inch, a 23 inch, a 24 inch, 26 inch and a 27 inch.  The 27 inch was the best fight I’ve had this year, I would've bet anything that was 29 to 30 inch fish.

One interesting thing from today was while we were trolling out in the mud we caught a lot of spiny water fleas on our line.  This was the first of the spiny fleas that I have seen this summer.  Not sure what it means but it is interesting. 

In all it was a wonderful day.  The temperature was mild the winds were light no rain, no lightening, no hurricanes, no rouge waves and best of all we weren't at work.

Scarface

Fishing Report 7/20/08

Fishing sure is an adventure for me this summer, after enduring the monsoons and hurricane winds called the Wigwam summer classic and the Streiffs fishing Tournament, today was not much different.  My partner for the day was Todd Hagen (champion of the Spring Wigwam Classic).  The forecast was for scattered thunderstorms and light winds increasing to 10 mph in the afternoon.  I checked the radar at 6:30am and it showed a couple local rain showers but nothing at all coming in from the west.   We met at the boat in the Long Pt Marina at 7:30 and took off for Knight Island area, the plan was to start there and rock pick our way north through Knight, Bridges and Starren Shoals.  When we arrived at the first spot we were the only boat in sight.  I throttled back, dropped down off plane only to hear BOOOOOOOOM……rumble rumble rumble.  We looked back to see an ugly dark blue thunderstorm lighting up the sky.  We put down some bait and worked the first spot trying to see which way the storm was tracking.

After a short time it was quite apparent it was tracking right at us so we decided to head north to Garden Island because the lightening was pretty bad.  A side effect of the storm was it brought some bad winds with it, we pounded our way though and finally made it to Starren Shoals.  We pulled in and drug a leech and a crawler on the west side of the shoals.  The storm moved off and we were feeling good about our decision, we even started to get some action from the fish.  We missed a bunch but finally put a nice 15” walleye in the livewell and put back a few small ones.  All the while watching another dark cloud move toward us, then the rain started, it poured!!!!  We endured the downpour for a half hour then it started to rumble above us again so we reeled up and headed to the mud to pull some deep diving cranks.  We pounded through the waves again and stopped 6 miles NE of Lemms in a spot I had good luck in previous years.  The wind had went down to small rollers so Todd put down a Taildancer 11 and I put down a Reef Runner. We trolled for a couple of minutes and I got a nice 15-1/2” we continued south and pulled a 23” and a 26” and a few smaller ones.

We trolled all the way to Lemms watching storms in every direction.  There were 6 boats on the reef so we trolled by and called it a day.  We reeled up and headed back to Long Pt listening to the thunder rumble.  In all it was another adventure day with wind, heavy rain, thunder and lightening with a few fish for supper and a couple of bonus slot fish thrown in for fun.

 Scarface

Streiffs 9^th Annual Fishing Tournament
July 12, 2008

Well…..the Streiffs 9^th Annual Fishing Tournament in the books and what an adventure it was. The wind started to blow hard on Friday and blew until Sunday afternoon.  My partner this year was Nate Olafson, who also partnered with me in the Wigwam Summer Classic but that is another adventuresome tale.  He arrived at my place on Friday morning for a day of prefishing to a howling wind.  We watched it blow into Long Pt for a couple of hours and decided to drive over to Arnesons Rocky Pt to see how things looked over there.  When we arrived we walked down to the docks and after we stood there for a while a crowd of tournament anglers gathered to talk strategy and discus the weather.  After a long B.S. session we went home got my boat and returned to Rocky to do a little fishing.  We traveled south and pulled Shad Raps along the shore.  Near Willow Creek we got into a real nice bunch of walleyes in 6 feet of water that were hitting a blue #5.  We only fished a short time and had 3 nice ones that would weigh in the tourney and one that was just under 20 inches.  The wind was still blowing hard but was coming off shore so it wasn’t too bad.  A severe storm moved in and we quit for the day with a good plan for the next morning.

Saturday dawned with the wind blowing hard again.  We went out in the 3rd flight and headed east to Willow Creek.  The ride over went well, it only took about 15-20 minutes.  We trolled along and the shore and the waves started to build.  We hooked a nice walleye after a short while trolling head on into the waves.  We were both standing and facing to the rear trying to land the fish when a huge wave broke over the bow catching us by surprise.   The wave stood the boat on end almost dumping us both out the back but we somehow got a nice 17” walleye in the livewell.  The waves continued to build, a short while later another monster wave broke right at the bow and pushed the boat straight backwards and pulled both lines into the propeller.  I started the big motor to move us into deeper water to do some damage control only to somehow get line wrapped into the bid motor prop as well!!!  It was too rough to do anything and we were drifting into 3 feet of water with 4 to 6 ft swells so I said to cut the lines and we headed for Warroad.

The trip to Warroad took 1 hour at about 7 mph.  Along the way we came across the Ranger boat that was swamped near Swift ditch, that was a sad sight but everyone made it out safe and that the most important thing.  We pulled my  boat out of the water at the docks and removed both propellers and a lot of line.  We put the boat back in and trolled in front of the Warroad Estates and caught several more fish including 2 more for the tourney.  In the end we brought 3 walleyes to the scale for a 28^th place finish with 4.25 pounds and we were pretty satisfied with what we had.

 The tournament field consisted of 98 boats that braved the wind and ventured out to fish.  The amount of fish that were brought back to the scales showed the extreme high skill of the tournament field in the Streiff Tourney.  There were 4 walleyes weighed in that were over the magic 28 inch mark and many impressive baskets of fish especially considering the wind which blew very hard and gusted over 30 mph making very challenging condition. Big congratulations for Brian Erickson and Darrin Peterson both of Warroad who had the heaviest basket weighing 14.15 pounds including one that was over 28 inches.

 Special thanks to the gang at Streiffs who put on a fantastic tournament every year.  They did a great job again the year in spite of the wind and heavy rain in the afternoon and awarded over $15,000 in prizes.