Lake of the Woods 4th week Oct 2018

My annual fall Lake of the Woods/Rainy River trip.

We leave @ 5oc am Saturday morning to ensure we get to our destination before the evening and dark thirty arrives. The deer in the headlights look is not something you want to experience for the last 2 hours of this trip.

We caught two big’ins on prefish day going out of Zippel Bay fishing the rock pile there in 20 fow and then traveled towards Long Point to work on a couple of smaller rock piles there and caught the second one. Terrys had beatout mine by an 1/8″. Both waldo’s were 9 pounders. I caught two smallies @ about 19 and 20 inches with a couple of eater wallies sifted in. Cleaned the smallies and 5 other walldos. 3 for the fish fry and 2 to freeze for the trip home.

Second day was windy as hell, went into a dead place in the river, “The Church” @ Pine CA this is up river from Clementson MN. Anchored, jiged, drifted, trolled into the current, casted, ect – Dead. This is an area that has always in past produced very well. Just the last few years it has died.

Third day we tripped up to the islands 20 ish miles North and caught some nice ones for the fry and froze a few more. The ride up @ 8 to 18 mph was a bit taxing on our bodys for the next upcoming days but the ride back was pleasurable and a lot quicker return.

Fourth day we fished a couple of areas that I have known of but never did well at all. This time was different. Went up river from Ballards by the American church 4 /5 miles. Caught some smaller ones and some nicer ones. Traveled an other 4/5 miles and fished another drop off where it was always a snot rocket bite. We finished out our limit with some other nicer walldos. Take homes were 16 1/2″ to 19 1/4″ and a 1/2 dozen kicker Saugers. Interesting we caught zero perch this year!

All in all, we only had a couple of night time lows below freezing and one day that blew our socks off. one part of a day drizzle and rest of the time dry. One day of clouds and most of the other days were showing a pristine blue sky to mostly sunny skies. Day time highs were mostly in the mid/upper 40’s to low 50’s. Water temps were dancing above and below 40 degrees.

The drive to Ballard’s Resort was uneventful both directions. But, this was the year of the rod. Each of us broke a rod, one was brand new and broke the tip, mine ended up in 3 pieces and I also lost a brand new one. It will be very painful to pay for it when my mastercard bill arrives next month.

sounds like a great trip overall Denny !!
I remember the rollers we were in on the main lake last year,still get a little woozy thinking back on that day.

we need to hear the story how the rod got lost,hopefully it was from getting freight trained by a monster fish !!

lastly,who won the card games?? seeing as how you had three of you that knew what you were doing instead of two players and one ole farm kid who only remembers playing old maid and slapjack.
someday I will get good at it and win my nine bucks back !!

Both were up river by Pine @ “The Church”.

I broke my rod trying to get the spiderwire leadhead un stuck and still had the drag set too tight. While I was trying to wrap the line around the handle a few times to gently pull on it to free it up like I have done so many times before, I snapped the pole into 3 pieces.

The rod that left me was just respooled the night before with new superline on a refurbished Stratic that had the rosewood “T” handle. I love those reels! I was struggling earlier trying to clean out a birds nest and retying to a leadhead. Finally got it done (after f—ing with it for what seemed like 20 minutes) had to deal with watering eyeballs and windy conditions on the micro diameter line @ 10 pound strength. Grabbed the line, flipped open the bail and gave it a fling to straighten out the line. Dam thing locked in my index finger, flipped out of my fingers and slapped along the side of the boat and went to meet Davy Jones. Some B*&^^%! Spanking new G Loomis with the Stradic. I will see a CC bill with a $348.40 charge from Reeds that was @ 20% off. ($400 retail). G. Loomis Walleye Series WRR 8500S GLX. Dam nice rod and reel combo let me tell ya!

That whole endeavor took me a while to cool off. The guys after a bit mentioned about trying to cast for it. We had no heavy treble hooks and the river was flowing faster than usual and 3 foot higher than I normally see it. It was already after 4:30 pm. We had a couple of hours to load and return to the cabin shower and get the boat covered up for the night. Now by the time I would have gotten a waypoint marked, the rod/reel would have easily traveled over 75 feet. Casting lighter weight treble hooks would have netted zero accuracy to where it may have landed. Again the water was moving fairly fast to me.

Oh, ya, the pitch game. I was not getting any cards all week. I was putting on the show! v$35.

My wife and I were at LOW on Saturday, putting in at Cyrus and found lots of walleyes just outside of the gap at Morris Point in 18 – 20 ft. of water. Pulled cranks for a couple of hours trolling back and forth in front of the gap catching several including a nice 9 pounder which was caught by my wife, but floating weeds and grass made trolling cranks difficult. We then jigged where we’d marked many walleyes while trolling with gold/pink jigs and got the fastest action on perch colored jigging raps. We threw back many smaller fish and after getting a late start, went in at about 2:30 with limits of walleyes and saugers. Overall great fishing.