2010 Rainy Lake Get Together Event Recap

Man I wish I had a free weekend!!Great report James now lets see some more Jpegs from the rest of you boys!!

It was a blast James thanks again

You went zonar?

Had I known!

I read the report around 1 this morning. It made me want to sign up for next year and…it made me hungry!

It must be nice up there this time of year.

Fantastic recap James. That trip was a blast.

A big thanks to IDO, RLHB, Sturdiwheat, and B-Fish-N-Tackle

Looks like a fun trip. 1st photo pulling those 3 skeeters, wow thats an expensive pull.

Yeah BK had a great time why ?

Great report!

Way cool stuff right there

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You went zonar?

Had I known!

I read the report around 1 this morning. It made me want to sign up for next year and…it made me hungry!

It must be nice up there this time of year.

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We ‘ll both have to go and show those guys how to catfish.

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We ‘ll both have to go and show those guys how to catfish.

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One thing I’m sure of… only anglers with mad skills can catch cats on Rainy.

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only anglers with mad skills can catch cats on Rainy.

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I think we are a shoe in Mike.

Hey BK, if you head out on the Lake with a mega watt head lamp on be ready for the border patrol! I’m not sure they would buy your story of “fishin’ cats” in the middle of the night. Most likely you would end up in a cell with Frenchy.

Guess you could always appeal to the IDO faithful for character witnesses.

That’s one story I would like to hear……………….

You guys asked for it. Brian and I will have to accept this challenge. What are the regs for bullheads as bait and stink bait up there?

Hi James –

Great report! What was the pattern for the crappies on the Rat Root? Been up there before and it was a minnow on a spinner rig bite. That works, but it can get snaggy in there. If you could, let me know. Thanks!

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Hi James –

Great report! What was the pattern for the crappies on the Rat Root? Been up there before and it was a minnow on a spinner rig bite. That works, but it can get snaggy in there. If you could, let me know. Thanks!

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1/8 oz jig and a minnow pitched up tight to the pencil reeds.

I have to give a thumbs up to Billy for the time he spent on Friday to help the group on the Rat. Billy works hard to make the most of your trip, Thanks also to James and the hole group for sharing the information on the bite.
To bad Mother nature was play jokes on us!

Huskerdo – Nice meeting you guys on Saturday night, “roughing it” back at base…

Hope you enjoyed the fish/poppers/veni.

Mike

the poppers, venni and fish hit the spot! going back to “homebase” was not a bad plan B, at least we could fish well as learn some new water.

A BIG THANKS goes out to IDO, Rainy Lake Houseboats, and Sturdiwheat. It was another incredible trip for the history books. The fishing was a little different than last year but the good times still rolled as it was great catching up with friends from last years trip.

Our group was able to find a little different bite this year witch worked out great on those windy days when fishing the big waves was not so enjoyable. We also did our fair share of jigging and casting for pike but this trolling bite was a fun bit I’d like to share with everyone.

Thanks to the keen eye of Ron and Pete we found a fun leadcore trolling bite. While wandering around one morning Ron and Pete noticed a vast area of susspended fish that were following huge schools of baitfish. After several attempts to slip bobber these fish and no trolling gear they moved on. Ron mentioned to Layne and I later in the day about this area and we decided to take a look as I NEVER leave home without trolling gear. After only a few minutes of graphing these fish we had Ron and Pete anchor their boat nearby and jump in with us for some trolling.

We picked out a few deep diving crankbaits attached them to the leadcore rods and also added some snap weights to get to these deep fish a little quicker. It was 10 minutes into out first trolling run and we had a double of 22.5 inchers.

We continued to catch several of these fish that afternoon and returned to the area a couple more times throughout the trip. It sure was fun having Ron and Pete jump in the boat with us. Running 4 rods also seems to help dial a trolling bite in a little faster. Thanks for the good company guys.

Layne and I also had some decent success pitching jigs on the reefs. We had our best success pitching on a spot that our anchor wouldn’t hold on last year. This year was no different than last as the spot held a good number of fish. The only difference for us this year was that my iPilot in Spot Lock would keep us on the fish for as long as we wanted. In a short time this spot produced 5 fish for us over the 22″ mark with the largest hitting the board at 25.5″. Below are a couple of Rainy tanks from that favorite reef.

Sa Wa EEET!

Your screen capture is crazy! We saw a lot of that out over deep water but getting those fish to eat after the cold front rolled through was next to impossible. Thanks for the pics!

Just like everyone else, boat 26 would like thank the IDO staff and Rainy Lake Houseboats for putting this gig together. Even with the high winds it was still a great trip. New people were and new friends were made. For me at least, I am already looking forward to next year (rumor has it there might be a spring trip )

Here’s a quick fishing synopsis. We (Phil, Drew and Ed) rolled into Thunderbird late Monday night and headed out to fish Rainy for the first time (ever) Tuesday. We really didn’t know what to expect, so we headed east of the Brule Narrows where we heard James and Dustin would be roaming around. To our surprise, we were able to find ~20 fish jigging in 26-46 feet of water. They were really all over the column.

Wednesday the trip started and our ability to catch fish jigging ended. We were getting very soft bites and were pulling back 1/2 and 3/4 skinned shiners. We decided to give lindy rigs with 3/8 oz no-snag sinkers a shot. The snell was just a 4-5′ piece of fluorocarbon loaded with nothing more than a hook. We chose the no-snags over tradition wire bouncers because the no-snags slide up and down the line with ease. This allowed us to literally feed the fish line when we felt a bite. When we felt a bite, we were ripping off 10-15 feet of line and letting the fishing eat it. This turned out to be our meal ticket (literally, our meal ticket ). Even in doing so, we had many fish that were just hooked on the lip or right inside the mouth. Never once did we have a fish swallow the bait.

We ended up with 3 or 4 days of 20+ fish with our biggest being 24″. Everyone one of us caught a 24″ fishing. So no big fish award for anyone. Although we lost a couple of fish that probably would have taken the prize. to those fish!

All in all it was a fantastic trip. The guy with the vikings garb below is a packer fan that drank a little too much (typical packer fan).

You can check out more picks from our trip here. IDO Rainy Lake 2010

Drew

*sigh*

That is all…

We need to get a pic of that 43” goliath pike caught by boat #10 up here. That was one impressive fish.

whittsend –

What was the pattern for you in the Rat Root? Same gig as James with the 1/8 oz jig tipped with a minnow and pitching it tight to the reeds? Looks like (from the pics) a bunch of your fish came from there.

Nice pics!

Scott

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Hi James –

Great report! What was the pattern for the crappies on the Rat Root? Been up there before and it was a minnow on a spinner rig bite. That works, but it can get snaggy in there. If you could, let me know. Thanks!

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1/8 oz jig and a minnow pitched up tight to the pencil reeds.

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Thanks James! Any particular color that you’d recommend starting with?

Scott

Trip was awesome, great food, great people and fishing–well, that’s fishing. Some days you killem’ and some days you don’t no matter where you fish.

In retrospect, couple things I learned from this trip: 1) if you don’t mark fish, don’t fish. West side of the Brule Narrows was devoid of large pods of baitfish and very few marks (we checked multiple reefs idling around for close to 5 hours on Thursday-most of our fish were caught in Canada around the Fox islands and really were running and gunning picking off active fish from small pods). My advice to people is, if not marking baitfish west of the Narrows, GO EAST! In talking to people in retrospect, those reefs were loaded with bait and fish-but the cold front did reduce the activity of those fish as well. Also, in retrospect, I did learn that the ciscos really do tend to pile up more east of the narrows in that basin(as evidenced by Ben’s trolling bite) v/s the west of the Narrows, which deep water was devoid of such suspended fish(these fish could have migrated north as well into the Canadian basin). According to a MN fishery biologist I talked to, the ciscos really do stack up on the east side, most likely moving into prespawn activities. 2) Rainy is a BIG lake, so have a “plan B”. The wind essentially took away further exploring or fishing the main lake-“gales of November” pretty much described it. So our crew followed the Eau Claire boys lead and headed back to RainyLake base camp and fished the Rat Root River-very good choice. Basically, we gained a solid 1.5 days of fishing that we would have missed and learned a whole new part of the system (MONSTER CRAPPIES!).

So, on a whole, GREAT trip and looking forward to getting back up there-but like I said, “that’s fishing for you!”.

For us, hair jigs and meat were the main stay for crappies and eyes. We upped to 5/16 oz jigs for deeper eyes and downsized to 3/32nd and 1/16 oz jigs for the crappies. Kelly Green was the color that did the most damage. We did switch to a flourocarbon leader, but for us did not get more bites than the high vis mono, but did get us more bites than tied straight to fireline crystal. For some, the flouro leader gave more bites and I can see how it certainly can be a good thing.

3) Learn to rig! The guys east of the narrows that were willing to slow down and lindy rig (and split shot rig) caught inactive fish the jiggers seemed to be missing-never anything wrong with soaking a minnow! Huskerdu from our group did rig west of the narrows and it worked on those scattered fish-but bet he would have killed them on the other side if he had more time to explore. Guess that is a great excuse for another trip!!!

Jeremy

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Hi James –

Great report! What was the pattern for the crappies on the Rat Root? Been up there before and it was a minnow on a spinner rig bite. That works, but it can get snaggy in there. If you could, let me know. Thanks!

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1/8 oz jig and a minnow pitched up tight to the pencil reeds.

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Thanks James! Any particular color that you’d recommend starting with?

Scott

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Anything bright. Orange, chartreuse or firetiger seemed to be on the wet end of most lines targeting crappies.