Dissappointing weekend @ Sportsmans

Well overall it was a really disappointing weekend. The guy that put the trip together opted to stay at Sportsmans and bomber out with them Sat & Sun.
All I can say is…..never again.
I have done Bomber trips with a couple other resorts and have always had a great time and been impressed with the service.
We were in the first group out both the mornings but we didn’t even leave the lodge until 8 and sunrise was 8:10 so we didn’t get fishing until close to 9 both mornings. They had a bomber break down so we sat out there Sat night until after 5:30. Earlier in the day the mantle in the light broke apart when the door closed and they never brought us a new one so we sat there in the dark luckily I had packed a headlamp just in case so we could pack up. I am just glad they didn’t leave us out there since there weren’t any lights on in the house.

We went in to the bar for dinner Sat night and they were out of Miller Lite AND Mich Golden light tap beer….not sure how that happens but it did.

Fishing was tough too but that is fishing, I was just really bummed with the general “I don’t care if you have fun” attitude we got from everyone at the resort. I have done bomber rides when the fishing has been horrible and still had a great weekend so fishing results aren’t driving my disappointment.

Oh well…live and learn I guess….shoulda gone somewhere else. The last bomber trip I did a couple years ago was with Wigwam, Capt Mike drove us out and he was great, fishing was horrible but we had a blast all weekend.
JB

It is never fun when stuff dosent go the way to want it to go. Hard to believe they ran out of Beer though OUCH. That always makes things worse. Did you catch any fish at all. Having a artic cold snap kinda kill the mood on the fishing front as well.

Fishing was tough, I knew it would be with that big of a cold front. I think for 10 guys we kept maybe 24-25 fish, mostly sauger with a few eyes mixed in. We threw back a few small ones and we did get one nice 24″ eye so that was fun. We had 2 houses with 5 in each house and I would say we maybe caught 35 Sat and around 20ish on Sunday in each house. Not exactly slayin’em. I am sure I will get up there for round 2 maybe even round 3 or 4 this year.

At least you got some fish. Four of my friends went all the way up to winni from the lacrosse area and caught 8 fish in three days fishing out of a sleeper shack.

Ouch is right… running out of beer is not good!!

Did you fish from the main Sportsmans lodge and bomber to fishing grounds, or did you bomber out to a different lodge (e.g. Sportsman’s Oak Island) and then sleep/fish there?? From the sounds of your post, you stayed at the mainland lodge and probably fished closer to the south shore??

Any certain color or lure work better than others? We are headed up to the Sportsman’s Oak Island in the NW angle this weekend. Hope we don’t run into the same luck/service that you did… This will be our first trip with this lodge. We have gone to the Wigwam for years, but wanted to try the NW angle after hearing about high catch rates and good sized walleyes… I’m hoping we aren’t dissapointed!!!

Anyone been to the NW angle?? Any reports from that area??

Thanks, and my condolences again about running out of beer….

After the storms last week, it took a heck of a front to push it through, hence the lock- jaw. It will only get better soon

We caught fish on several different things. Sat the glow pink stop sign was working well for one guy…he probably got half of the fish that the house got but 2 other guys couldn’t catch a cold with it, then Sunday fish wouldn’t touch it.

I just kept changing, if I had a couple lookers with no takers I switched up. I used a variety of spoons sizes and colors, chubby darters, lindy darters and a rapala jiggin shad as well. The lindy darter caught 1 fish, the others nothing.
I wish I could tell you there was a pattern that worked…there just wasn’t, at least not for our group.

We stayed at the main lodge on the Rainy river and bombered to fish houses from there.

Just got home from 2 days of fishing with River Bend Resort, all I can say is Gamakatsu #2 red and pink hooks are the cure for them cold front fish.

The GF and I caught about 100 walleye and sauger, none were big though the biggest were 17 inchers. I’d say we probably missed about 50 more atleast lol. Only caught a few on various jigs and I threw pretty much everything at them, the rest were all on plain red or pink hooks.

We had fatheads, shiners, and rainbows and they all produced pretty much equally.

We just got back last night from fishing JAKE’S in the northwest angle. We fished friday and saturday. We had 12 guys and friday kept 36 and sunday 43. The fishing wasn’t top notch but its fishing. Our biggest two were 29 inch and a 26. We had 4 houses so it was nice to be all in different deeps looking for fish. Our first house we fished was about 28 feet of water and this is where the big fish was pulled from with a few perch and walleye. But the second day we all moved to 18 feet of water and did a little better number wise.

On a side note…Can a DNR officer walk into your shack without asking???

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We just got back last night from fishing JAKE’S in the northwest angle. We fished friday and saturday. We had 12 guys and friday kept 36 and sunday 43. The fishing wasn’t top notch but its fishing. Our biggest two were 29 inch and a 26. We had 4 houses so it was nice to be all in different deeps looking for fish. Our first house we fished was about 28 feet of water and this is where the big fish was pulled from with a few perch and walleye. But the second day we all moved to 18 feet of water and did a little better number wise.

On a side note…Can a DNR officer walk into your shack without asking???

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Depends on what you are trying to hide.

I hope people don’t lump all the lodges together. Ballards Resort has been very good to me. I’ve been there twice and I’m going back again at the end of Feb on a bus trip. I was there over New Years Eve with my girlfriend and we caught about 60 fish out of our house in 2 days. Our Bombers left each mornng at about 7:15 and we were fishing 15 minutes later.

I know the fishing got tough with the big cold snap we had, but Ballards moved farther and deeper looking for fish and they found them. They are now in about 34ft of water and catching fish. Nick Anthony is the head guide and will be on WCCO radio tonight at 8:35 doing an interview and talking about LOW ice fishing.

There’s room on our bus if anybody wants to go. Bus trip, 3 meals per day, fish cleaning, lodging for $399. Feb 18th-21st. Ballards number is 218-634-1849 if you wanna book a spot or shoot me a pm if you want details.

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I hope people don’t lump all the lodges together. Ballards Resort has been very good to me. I’ve been there twice and I’m going back again at the end of Feb on a bus trip. I was there over New Years Eve with my girlfriend and we caught about 60 fish out of our house in 2 days. Our Bombers left each mornng at about 7:15 and we were fishing 15 minutes later.

I know the fishing got tough with the big cold snap we had, but Ballards moved farther and deeper looking for fish and they found them. They are now in about 34ft of water and catching fish. Nick Anthony is the head guide and will be on WCCO radio tonight at 8:35 doing an interview and talking about LOW ice fishing.

There’s room on our bus if anybody wants to go. Bus trip, 3 meals per day, fish cleaning, lodging for $399. Feb 18th-21st. Ballards number is 218-634-1849 if you wanna book a spot or shoot me a pm if you want details.

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Going up on the 7th of February on the bus out of Kasson .