Ely has dozens of lakes with safe walkable ICE now, but with the crazy weather we have been having the fishing has been hit or miss. The warm up tomorrow (Friday) should really kick the walleye into a feeding frenzy through the weekend! I will post another update after the weekend with more pictures, but here are a few pics from Wednesday’s catch with “Bing” and his good friend “Gus the Typical Fish-Master”. Bing is quite modest and refused to take pictures with his bigger fish to help stroke Gus’s ego even more, but don’t let him fool you; this guy knows how to catch fish! I did manage to somehow get him to pose with a future monster walleye that he probably doesn’t want me to share, but just to show you how modest he really is I am going to share it anyways!
Gus asked me before he came up, what 1 lure he should pick up on the way here. I told him to grab a 3/16 oz Red Shiner Tingler. When we started out in the morning it was quite cloudy, so we went with brighter glow colors. Gus started out with a green glow buckshot and caught a 15″ walleye right off the bat. After the sun showed up Bing caught his first walleye on a 5/16 oz pro series slender spoon, it was a beautiful fish as far as the colors go with one heck of an appetite–going after a spoon 1/3 its weight! It got quite for a little while after those 2 fish were caught and then a hoot and a holler came from Gus’s 1-man flip-over. He landed a nice 17″ range eye almost instantly after dropping the Red Tingler down the hole for the first time. Not long after, Bing pulled up a decent pike on a tip-up, somewhere around 28″ maybe more. While I was resetting the tip up (that darn pike ran a mile in a minute) Gus starts going nuts “It’s a nice one”. Bing gets to him first and as I arrive they had just wrestled the biggest walleye of the day out of the hole, Gus is grinning from ear to ear as the cameras come out.
Once we all settle back down and get back to fishing, Gus yells out to us: “I’m going to buy every last one of those jigs!” Not long after, Gus silently (totally not like him) iced a beautiful 19″ fish taking not only first, but now second and 3rd place for the big fish of the day. Again, this time a little less loudly and a lot more seriously he stated “I’m going to buy every last one of those red Tinglers at Gander Mountain this weekend.” If you want a red Tingler this year, you’re going to have to hurry; after getting to know Gus a bit, I wouldn’t doubt him for a minute! A few more 17-18″ walleye were caught after that and Bing was able to steal a 3rd place position from Gus with a beautiful walleye on a tip up after jigging a nice one up out of his flip-over. He couldn’t quite steal Gus’s smile, but he got to put some of his ego in check! I have a feeling these two guys kicked off the start of what is going to be an exciting ice fishing season and I was glad they let me tag along for it all. Oh and they both kicked my butt, so we’re going to have to fish again this year to see if tables can turn a little! Thanks for letting me tag along with you guys, I will be happy to hold a camera for you anytime!
Ben Putnam
Timber Trail Lodge
Attachments:
Future-Monster.jpg
Cold-Day.jpg
Guss-Pig.jpg
Gus-19-incher.jpg
