Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Berkeley Gulp Bait Catches Walleyes

Berekely Gulp bait, the artificial bait that comes in a jar, is outperforming live bait for walleyes or at least proving its equal.
Two types of the bait are reported by our anglers to be especially deadly: the 6-inch worms and the 3-inch leeches.
These can be fished on walleye spinners or Lindy rigs (just a hook and a sinker).
I would suggest everybody bring a jar of each as well as their preferred live bait.
Walleyes are being caught everywhere now. The average size is 22-24 inches with many 28-inchers beight caught.
Lots of northern pike also are being caught, especially in the 30-39 inch size.
Lake trout are now in deep water.
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Thursday, June 19, 2008

Summer walleye, northern pike fishing

The days are now nice and warm and fish are in their early summer patterns.
Walleyes are being caught in large numbers by backtrolling walleye spinners with either leeches or nightcrawlers. They are in 6-12 feet of water, depending on the wind and cloud conditions.
Spinner colors that are working well this week are gold, red and chartreuse.
I would also have some blue and orange shades ready as these also usually work.
Northern pike are now preferring the smaller lures as discussed in Lighten Up for Northern Pike (see item at right).
Little Cleo and other spoons in 2 to 2.5 inch length are working. It's now time to downsize spinners. Where Mepps #5 was working well, now Mepps #4 is a better choice.
And the good old 1/4-ounce Beetle Spin, that little favorite with bass fishermen, is producing well.
For trollers, try using 3-5 inch floating stick baits like the Shallow Running Shad Rap. Let out about 100 feet of line and troll as close as possible to the windy shorelines. Blue is a good color.
The water is now warm enough for swimming, at least for the brave-hearted.
We're seeing our first mosquitoes of the year.
Quite a few moose are being seen along the shorelines and yesterday a brown-colored black bear was spotted swimming.
Ducks and loons are still sitting on their nests.
The water level is more or less normal for this time of year.
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Sunday, June 8, 2008

Weight consideration: you're killing us!

So many of our fishermen are bringing excessive weight that I wonder if our asking them to "use their head and only bring what is necessary" on our website was written in Swahili.
Our boat that we use to bring people the 20 miles to and from camp can only carry so much weight. We expect to take 9 passengers and their gear and have scheduled our pickup times in Red Lake accordingly. Each round trip takes 1.5 hours.
When some people bring excessive baggage it means other people cannot get on the boat. This means they must wait while we take the heavyweights out to camp. This means delays in some people going fishing. This means they are angry at the heavyweights. This also means much higher transportation costs and time expenditure for us. We will have no choice but to pass these higher costs on to you, our customers, next year.
Housekeepers are the worst offenders. We are seeing many of them bring 100 pounds of food and drink per person per week! That's 15 pounds per person per day! It isn't humanly possible to consume this.
On loading the boat to camp in Red Lake they all say they won't have this much weight at the end of the week. But of course they do because as we just pointed out, it isn't humanly possible to consume this.
Besides food and drink, the next biggest weight problem is fishing gear. Many of you are bringing multiple lead-heavy tackle boxes PLUS totes stuffed with batteries, etc.
It's a real drag.
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