June 25th, 2012 Report,
For the past few years I have been working on the North Dakota relatives to meet halfway in Alexandria, we finally got around to it this year. We had a bump where less than a month before our trip our reserved lake home had some issues and I had to scramble to find another place on short notice. It worked out and we had a great time. As part of this 1st annual trip, I had booked an outing with Joe Scegura. I had seen postings and a few reviews on Joe but I think the one that caught my eye was he had offered a free trip to the most convincing story of a deserving Military Personnel. My brother who is in the service and has served 3 tours in Iraq and 1 in Afghan couldn’t make it this year but will likely next year, but I just had thought how great that would be for someone to come back on leave and have a guided outing. So great job on that offering Joe!!!
So for this year it was my father, my brother-in-law and myself. We were booked with Joe for a half-day trip in the afternoon. We lucked out with the weather as a stable weather pattern had finally settled in for the previous few days. Joe met us in town and we were on our way.
Our first spot we setup on some mid-lake humps targeting weed edges/points with a slip-bobber setup. Joe was very, very helpful in relaying helpful hints, tips and directions on the setup, structure description and structure location. We picked up a few walleyes and some extra fish but we had to move around. The slip-bobber setup works well for exploring weeds edges as well as it works for staying stationary.
Soon we were off to Spot #2 to target similar structure that was just a few feet shallower. It didn’t take long and we were catching fish of the whitetip nature. We were getting doubles and even some triples. Most of the fish were in the 13-14″ and were returned but we found a good number of nicer 15-20″ fish also.
As if we weren’t having fun already, but it was on to Spot #3 and some lindy-rigging. I love rigging myself which was great but my father and brother-in-law have little experience with lindy-rigging. Joe was very quick to pick up on this and spent extra time and effort educating and working with both of them. A few missed fish and some more instruction and soon they were getting a few fish.
Getting closer to dusk we were about to call it in but Joe offered to do some shallow water cranking. Of course why not, right!! A stretch of shallow, rocky area free of weeds and we were rolling and trolling. We landed 2 small fish, one keeper and my brother-in-law lost one really nice fish right at the boat. At this point, I could tell the brother-in-law (not a huge fisherman) might have had his fun so I made the call to head in.
Joe has a top-notch operation and has worked hard to have one heck of a business. I know he probably isn’t in need of my endorsement but I feel obliged to share an excellent experience with others and give a guy his due when he has earned it. If you are coming to Alexandria and are looking for a great fishing experience, contact Joe. He is very knowledgeable, eager to teach, excellent with his electronics and overall great guy!! I will be in touch on the next annual Alexandria trip for our family and hopefully I can get my brother to visit and enjoy some fishing.
Funny note here, early in the trip Joe had been mentioning how he had company the last few days with other boats creeping. I took this as to kind of keep things calm and cool to not draw attention to ourselves. At the end of the night, Joe says “I usually get one loud WAHOOO after catching around 40-50 walleye.” Here you go Joe, WAHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Thanks for a great evening of fishing.
-Tim
