Lake of the Woods New Years Weekend???

Hi all,
Anyone else going to Lake of the Woods for new years weekend???

The walleye-brat and I are heading up there.
We will be up again the last weekend in Feb….it would be fun to hook up with other IDA mems that are going to be up there those weekends.
If not oh well….good luck fishing where ever you might be.
John “Buckshot” Blanchard

My wife and I will be starting the new year up at Mille Lacs. Anybody else going to be up there?

Good luck at LOW Buckshot.

Lenny Jamison

Myself and Mike Finke will be there that weekend. We are staying at Schusters.

We are going to be staying at the baudette motel and going out of Wigwam. We are bombering out Fri and Sat then ding portables on Sunday….if we need to…and if we can drive out.
We should try and hook up for a beer in the evenings.

I got nothing planned, Stickboy….Let’s go?

I would but there is now way you will find a hotel or a house. you would have to do portables which is fine but you would have to sleep in the truck which isnt fine

Actually last week I switched from the room I originally had to a different one….the Baudette Motel might have a room available….besides I think a lot of people cancel even though some resorts charge a deposit.

Chappy….your wife ice fish???

I am going to be in Tampa New Year’s eve prepping for the Badgers in the Outback Bowl. Playing the same fast Georgia team that creamed us a couple years back. Sunday watching the Pack (hope they beat the Vikes the weekend before) and Monday chasing Reds, Permit, and Snook. Coming home Tuesday.

However I am jealous of either trip to LOTW or Mille Lacs!!!

Mark

I don’t know Mark….warm temps chasing reds sounds like a pretty fun time as well.
Not much of a badger fan or a packer fan but…I hope the badgers win and the pack loses….hows that 50/50 isn’t too bad. I always root for big ten teams when they are playing outside the conference. Make sure you take a lot of pictures…I will post some when I get back….you do the same.
JB

Send me an email with your cell #. Maybe we can hook up.

Well…getting ready to leave the office for LOW….should be a fun drive.
What is with this crap….rain the end of Dec??
I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year….I know I will….well that is if I make it to Baudette.

buckshot:

I thought I would let you know that we caught some fish after watching the Badgers defense falter on the last drive and lose the game to GA. Congrats on the Gophs victory. Just got finished moving to Kenosha, WI and now look to become a trout and salmon fisherman again. Lake Geneva is not far away and hope to pull some cranks after getting the post spawn bite of walleyes taken care of and will post several pics from what turned out to be a great day of catching speckled seatrout and baby tarpon. This first pic is of a small trout.

Mark

This next pics is of my nephew Chris and guide Dave Markett. I think you can see the shoulder of my brother Barry. We fished out of Tarpon Springs. The early a.m. bite was a little off simply because I don’t think the water had warmed up enough. The day started out with 62* water. We hit four spots before we saw a fish move out of the way. Nothing at the fifth spot for five minutes and off to the sixth where we caught two trout (water temp 64*). Nothing more and off to the seventh spot (water temp 66*) where we must have caught conservatively 50 – 60 trout. We caught and released many fish and kept our 15 fish limit before two o’clock.

Mark

This next pic is of a shallow bar and several snowy egrets(I think). We started in the Anclote River and did pull up to a hot water outlet to see if any pompano, blues or permit were around. We didn’t even cast and Dave talked to an oldtimer he knew and we were off to check out the run of spots I mentioned earlier.

Mark

Here is my nephew Chris with the only red (17.5″) of the day. How about those spots!!! We did see several others, but our inability to see them and put it in front of them didn’t help us get any of them on the hook. Come to think of it, I think we still owe him the money. We fished with 1/4 oz. plastics all day long. We started with baits by Tsunami. These baits were prerigged by the company. We actually started to run out of those and had to improvise and use some of the plastics being touted by In-Fisherman for walleyes.

Mark

Here is Chris with a respectable trout. I think this was one of several we caught in the 17″-20″ class. He actually lost the handle and thinks he was bite by the fish on its way to the boat deck, but I think he just got spined. Kind of funny where the wound was!!! Right behind his left arm.

Mark

Here is my brother Barry with a 20 inch fish. Notice the power plant we fished earlier in the day. Most of the water we were fishing was deep (6′) in between shallower grass beds.

Here is guide Capt. Dave Markett with our biggest fish of the day. This one went 24″ almost 25″ long. If you are interested in fishing the interior of FL on an airboat, this is the guy for you. He offered to take us gator hunting, Osceola Turkey hunting, frog gigging as well as sightseeing from the airboat. Dave is also very versed in skinny water as well as fishing Boca Pass for the mighty tarpon. The fish they are taking run from the low 100 pound range to into the 200 pound range. He fishes the Tarpon circuit and does it with his clients instead of putting together a specific crew for them. If you are interested in talking with him let me know. He was great!!!

Here is yours truly with one of the 50 baby tarpon we caught after lunch. By the way talk about shorelunch, it was from a restaurant right on the Anclote River. Then we ran up the river for another two hours of battling baby tarpon. These fish don’t reach the size of their Atlantic cousins. The biggest fish we caught during our tarpon bout was maybe 30″ long. But they are full of the same scrap that you see in all the tarpon shows, just smaller. These things are jumping fools!!!

Mark

Here is a pic our our catch going to the cleaning table. If any of you guides out there want to have fun, just run a bunch of walleyes on your clients fingers like Dave did. Most were still alive and those little sharp teeth and them biting down on your fingertips was quite the deal.

The last pic is of the day turning into table fare. They are quite good and my niece and her roommate are enjoying them immensely. Chris went back down with his girlfriend the next day (ain’t some kids got it tough) and got to eat some of our catch. Tomorrow I am leaving for Minocqua to fish in an ice tourney and the 13* predicted air temps are a far cry from the 75* days down there during this trip!!! Oh by the way, do the pelicans love this part of the day!!!

Hope I can show some great pics from the ice tourney.

Mark