We finally got everybody’s schedules to cooperate and headed to Rainy last week for one last outing on the open water. We pulled into Baudette Wednesday at about 1:00 and picked up an old friend from college I had not seen in about 16 years. It was a pretty good feeling having a “local” in the boat knowing we were only going to have about three hours of daylight remaining.
We decided to fish the Clementson area and it didn’t take long to find good numbers of 15″-16″ fish on a jig/shiner.
We fished until dark with the “local” pulling in the biggest fish of the day at 24″.
Thursday morning we decided to give the Birchdale area a try. We had to blend through a little ice at the landing, but overall it was a beautiful morning. We were looking forward to pulling some cranks this day, but it didn’t take long to figure out we weren’t going to find good numbers of fish unless we went back to the jig. We rapped for about three hours and only caught three fish, but two of the three were our biggest fish of the day — 19″ amd 27.5″. Here is a photo of my buddy with his nice 27.5″ (if I am able to figure out how to post the pic).
At about 1:00 we decided to trailer back to Clementson anticipating another good late afternoon jig bite. We caught plenty of fish, but no biggies. There appears to be a great class of 15″-16″ fish in the river, but the thing that stood out most about this day was how incredibly light the jig bite was.
It was great to get back to Rainy as it had been three years since our last trip. It doesn’t get any better than being on the open water in mid-November with great company, the fish biting, the sun shining, and being able to spend some time with an old friend. I can’t wait to go back next year.
And I love the name… great movie! 