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| 37" pike caught on Tip Up quick strike rig |
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| 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.
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| 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
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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.
