Bananas in the boat, high muddy water, and the river that should be named Patrick Roy R.

If monday was slow and tuesday was rough, gettin two fish on three bites and one fish on one bite respectively, then wednesday, thursday and friday were abysmal. With just two walleyes in two days of fishing "the nation's best walleye water" as proclaimed by walleye guru Ed Iman. Followed up by a shutout, biteless and fishless, Friday.

Mid day tuesday we left oregon city en route for the desert. A two hour drive from the omnipresent rain that hangs over portland there is in fact a desert. We drove through some of the most beautiful mountain passes and pine covered hills I may ever see, wild sheep, goats, and mule deer. As we pushed east the green mountains turned, eventually to brown sandy rolling hills with sparse sage brush splotchings.

We started out Wednesday AM with a nice 25in eye at about 7am. Iman called it a little guy...

Well we couldn't seem to find another taker for the remainder of the day despite other boats pulling in nearlly ten fish.

Thursday was even worse. We fished from sun up to noon without so much as a perch peck on anyones line. Finally at the last minute we drifted over a reef and snagged an 18in. milking male. After we landed the boat, and were unloading to head back to portland I found out we had one of the worst bad luck charms on the boat. Bananas!

We drove back to Portland to fish steelhead, salmon, and sturgeon for the last day. We were flat out shutout.

Somehow I went five, cold and rainy, days without even getting so much as a tug at the end of my line.

Now I am sitting in the San Fran airport waiting for a midnight flight to DFW airport. If I had to pick an airport to be layer over ari would choose that one. It has recliners all over the place.

I don't know when ill be fishing again, but I do have the trip out to niagra falls here in ten days.

Ill keep you guys posted. Love ya.

Portland day 2. King salmon

Same kind of fishing today. This time with guide, Greg Frogner. This was a very beautiful stretch of the clackammus river that featured huge cliffs and waterfalls.

The picture we got from the one fish we caught is supposed to make the cover of Salmon Trout Steelheader magazine.... we will see. If it does I will have made my first magazine cover!

Portland springers

Day one is over in portland. We trolled around fishing suspended fish @ 17-23 feet in 40-70 FOW. We were using 10oz. Weights on a 3 way swivel with a triangle flasher and herring dead bait.

We caught our first fish right away at 730 and it was a beauty. The second fish was the one I caught was also the last fish of the day, which came at 4:30.

Obviously it was a slow day on the water, but it was a good time and real easy fishing. You just sit there and watch the rod in the holder.

The guys were saying that these salmon are the best eating fish that they have ever had.

Tomorrow we are side drifting for salmon. Ill update then.

Blue Mountain Lake, AR

Sitting in the airport about to head out to portland. Had a great weekend! Went out to blue mtn. Lake in blue mtn,AR.  I've never seen a smaller town in my life. Literally 2 houses and one post office. We had a tough day on water (as fishing goes). But still pulled out 6-8 eaters before I hooked the big one off the mid lake rock pt in the picture. 

The lake was as beautiful a lake as I have ever seen. Huge mountains covered in trees. No houses in sight. Rocky shoreline. It looked a lot like a canadian lakes in some parts, and then others were the typical flooded timber that you see on every lake down here.

Ill try to post tonight when im in portland.

Northwest Angle, MN

37" pike caught on Tip Up quick strike rig

This was one of the first pictures that I took on the trip up on LOW.  This was about a 37in pike caught on a tip up and a sucker minnow.  The guy in the picture below this one is Jonny Petrowski, and he is sort of a pike expert on Upper Red, his family has been guiding Red for three generations.  If you ever wanted to know anything about Red Lake, Fishing Pike through the ice, or hear the craziest stories you have ever heard he is definately the guy to talk to.



Chunky 40.5" pike on a Viking Spoon and dead bait



He was telling us about a guy who had gotten his head stuck under the ice, and only had a a very small breathing room.  After carving around the guy's head with a leatherman he was able to free him... When asked why he had his head down the hole, the 60yr old man said... "well I was looking for the fish"

Another great story was during the height of the crappie boom.  The lake is notoriously competetive, just look at the sleeper ice houses for rent on the lake if you want proof.  Anyway the owners on the lake compete to get out on the ice the earliest to plow a road that blocks off the other resort owners from their stake of the lake. 

So he was telling us about this time when he got on a really good crappie bite, and as it always does, the word of the good bite got out to the rest of the Lake, and everyone wanted to sneak in on their spot.  So Jonny decided to keep people out by plowing a 9ft high bank around his houses so that portables and wheel houses couldnt invade on his spot. 

Eventually the other fisherman got upset with this, seeing as it is all public property, and started to bombard the barrier with trucks, trying to blast through the wall of snow. All day trucks all around the birm would plow into the snow, and have another truck pull them out.  Meanwhile Jonny on the inside of the wall kept circling the wall and plowing the wall higher and higer and adding more and more snow... Thus that day became known as FORD apache, in homage to Fort apache.

Jonny P. holding a nice 24.5in LOW Walleye caught on a Red Glow Rattlin' Flier



LOW was a really fun lake to fish through the ice because the clarity of the water made it necessary to fish really aggressively,  usually you are better off using a dead stick or bobber set up, and that did work well for catching smaller fish, but if you wanted a chance at a big girl like the one Jonny's got you had to be using a Red Glow flier like the one above, or my new favorite bait, the Purple Smelt Darter



Yours truly holding a 21.5" Eye that inhaled the Darter



I had never really had a lot of confidence in the lure, but I was told by Jon Thelen that it was the way to go on LOW, because it has rattle chambers and has quite a bit of action, and Ill tell you what, that is a big fish catcher through the ice... I would watch on my flasher the smaller marks showing up and looking at it and running off, but then a big thick red mark would shoot off the bottom and smash the lure like the fish I am holding here, I have never seen a fish so deeply hooked through the ice on a jigging rod.



                  

         

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   SnoBear Billy Rosner (left) Lake Vermilion Lindy guide team and Jason Taggert (right), LOW Lindy guide team



The SnoBear was a pretty cool experience, It dosent go too fast and isnt the smoothest ride, but as snow travel goes its about as good as it gets.  This is the way you should introduce anyone to ice fishing if you are trying to get them to enjoy it.  You dont have to do much besides pull up to the spot, and drill the holes.  Then from there you just hang out in a comfortable bucket seat, eat jerkey, and listen to music while catching fish.                                                                    

 

 We had about a 35min. ride out of Warroad to the southern part of reef just south of the "Angle"  If you look off in the distance at the shoreline, that is the furtherst northern part of the contenental US, called the Northwest Angle.

                         

  

The Bombers...                                                         

Without a doubt the craziest part of the week was the trip on the second day out to the boarder of US and CAN on a 45min bomber ride through -40 windchill and 40-50mph winds!  the snow was howling by our bomber and you could not see the navigational stakes unless you were darn near on top of them, and to make it even more trecherous, you cant rely on GPS to navigate up in that neck of the woods because of the spotty reception.  Its getting better, but it is definately nothing to rely on. The map below shows the trip that we made that day.                         

After driving in the howling whiteout for about a half hour and getting lost several times the bomber driver looks back at me and asks me, "Hey Ranger, do you want to be the hero?" (he was calling me Ranger because we bonded over the fact that we were both Forest Lake natives), and I of course jumped up out of my seat and hopped in the captains seat.  I drove it the last 25miles or so and the whiteout eventually broke, but the wind was howling all day, and the temperatures were well below zero despite there not being a cloud in the sky.

thats all for now.

Here is a picture of the 2.25lb. Crappie Barry Morrow caught on lake Eufaula.

You can kind of see the setup we were using, but its just 6lb mono, with a couple of loop knots about a foot apart for the two jigs.  We were just keeping our lures between 9 and 11 feet and slow trolling over the top of brush piles.  We probably caught about 20 fish, most were around or over one lb.


Here is a picture of a monster white bass that I DID NOT catch, Bobby Murray actually caught the fish and didnt want to be in the picture so I grabbed the fish and he took the picture. 

I guess they dont eat them after their first spawn because the fish get real oily and get very fishy tasting... so I didnt end up keeping any.

I also caught a yellow bass aka bar bass, and they are pretty cool because when you touch them they stick all their fins straight out and flex to become super rigid.

Heard a bunch of cool stories about the gators and cottonmouth/watermoccasins on this lake.

Bobby Murray... Him and his brother are legends in bass fishing down in this part of the world and they have done more fishing than anyone I have ever met.  They are the masterminds behind quite a few of the Lindy creations. 



The sun peeking out between the clouds on the headwaters of the Little River.  I should have taken a picture but I wont ever forget seeing the beware of Alligators sign at the landing.

Im officially an author now

I just wrote a (very) short piece that will be in the June edition of InFisherman, the biggest fishing magazine in the country!!!!

"LAKE PICKWICK

ALABAMA

Crappie>> The reservoir has become famous for its panfish production, and come June the crappie bite is in full swing.

Contact: Guide Keith Dodd, 256-679-1826, www.keithdoddsguideservice.com." 

 Its going to have a picture that i picked out also, im pretty excited to see it!