Last week I headed north with two fellow IDO members with hopes of fishing remote lakes. The weather (-40 degree temps) and slush altered our plans of hitting remote lakes, but we would not be completely deterred. We first headed to the Aitkin area where we dropped off the shacks and sleds. Why we left most of our equipment in Aitkin, I don’t know, but we will not make that mistake again. We then we headed to International Falls where we met up with RainyDaze for a couple of days. Chris “RainyDaze” Granrud already reported on our results on Rainy Lake, which resulted in a personal best (29 and 1/8 inch hog of a walleye) for IDO member “yamadog”.
For the rest of the week we headed to the Aitkin area to fish smaller, unpressured lakes for panfish. We spent two days targeting crappies on one small lake where we hamered 8 inch crappies all day, but were only able to bring a few of 10-12 inchers through the ice. We also had a few pike hit out ultra light setups and I felt like a kid in a candy store fighting them through the hole.
We finished up the week hitting Mille Lacs for a day. We awoke to forecast of above 0 temperatures and were excited to finally get out of the shacks and do some hole hopping. But since this is Minnesota the weather decided it needed to throw some wind into the mix and we dealt blowing snow for most of the day. Mille Lacs resulted in a personal best perch for IDO member “AverageSportsman” and another hog walleye (25 and 1/2 inches) for “yamadog”.
I’ll post some pics and hopefully “AverageSportsman” and “yamadog” will post some of the pics they have on their cameras. The weather didn’t fully cooperate, but it was still a blast, and I can’t wait to hit the ice again.
cheers 
