rainy river ice out

Nice fish and photos there Bigdill. Love seeing the sturgeons.

I didn’t catch many fish on this trip. The kids caught about 80% of the 173 we brought in the boat. I unhooked all 173 fish and baited all the hooks in the boat. Very proud of them for spending 9 hours in the boat on Friday and 8 hours on Saturday. They woke up this morning and wanted to go back out. We made the executive decision to head home because the NW wind was going to be a bear and wasn’t going to be enjoyable for anyone.

I got brave and tried to run the rapids so we could get out of the wind. I fought the rapids and the rapids won. Looking for a shop that will do skeg repair and rebuild the lower unit with a new prop shaft. Any recs?

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Ouch that hurts. The radips ate my boat as well but not nearly as bad, I had to hop out and push my boat off some shallow rocks. Hopefully that doesn’t hurt the check book to bad.

Debating using insurance. A prop is going to be around $500, plus skeg repair, prop shaft and seals. Plus who knows what else. I want to make sure there’s no vibration when it’s done. I’m sure I could do it all except the skeg but don’t want to screw around without the right tools and any other damage that I’m not aware of.

I took the LU off already and want to get it repaired soon.

I’m not sure who you have for insurance but last fall I hit a rock in the river below the dam in International Falls at about 5 mph. It bent my prop shaft and chewed the stainless prop up a little. I brought it to Handbergs on Crane Lake and a week later I had a brand new lower unit that cost me a $500 deductible. I have Country Financial insurance. When I dropped it off they said please tell me you don’t have Progressive. I guess they are a nightmare to deal with. Definitely worth looking into. Judging by the pictures that thing has to be completely detonated inside.

I’ve had 2 claims through Progressive in the last 10 years and was happy both times. They had questions and I had answers. Cut me a check same day. I have replacement coverage and decreasing deductible. Between the 2 claims my deductible cost was a little over $500.

I have progressive. I used them a few years ago when I had a trailer tire blow out and took out my fenders. The whole process was extremely easy and painless. The only issue I had was them figuring out whether it was auto insurance or boat insurance. We initially claimed it under the wrong policy.

Planning on giving my broker a call tomorrow.

They didn’t say progressive was necessarily bad, they just said it’s a lot longer process and way more hoops to jump through and everything takes way longer. I’m not sure how other insurance companies work but I was also able to buy my wrecked lower unit back for $100 which was nice. A new prop shaft and it would be good enough for a spare in a pinch.

End of the season is here and it did not disappoint. Decided to fish a spot we caught a couple walleyes on yesterday and just camp on it because nobody else was there. Ended up with a 29, 30 and 31 pitching jigs with big plastics. Then as the day went on the river cleared of boats and the fish turned on on a number of spots. Ended the day jumping a few spots and smacking a good number of fish. Lots of 23 to 26″ fish. Wind laid down, beautiful sunset and it was over. Back to reality tomorrow.

Was fishing alone for most of the day so only hot a photo of the 31.

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Good to talk to you last night, Mike. Was a little too busy where we ended last night.

Today we fished a different stretch and did well. Had the area all to ourselves. Biggest went 28”. Lots of 24-26”

I thought it might be helpful to share some observations fishing the rainy river with kids or inexperienced anglers. My kids are 6 & 9 and my wife was with who fishes maybe twice a year. The rods and line seemed to make a huge difference in hookup percentage. The kids out fished mom by about 5:1 and I’m thinking that rods and line were the main difference.

My personal two favorite rods are a 7’ MHXF and a 7’4” MXF. They both had 2500 series Stradics and 15lb PowerPro super slick V2 line with a 20lb floro leader. I was using one and the wife was using the other. She missed more than 1/2 the bites mainly because I think she wasn’t setting the hook hard enough. With the braid, I was thinking that this would play better because the no stretch line would theoretically be easier to set. I feel this was wrong.

The kids were using a 6’ ML moderate or fast action with 6lb mono. At first they struggled to get enough pressure on the fish to set the hook so their hookup rate was 50% or less. As I kept reminding them they need to set the hook harder, their hookup rates went way up to around 75% or more by the end of Saturday.

So if you were thinking of bringing young kids or very inexperienced fishermen along, I highly recommend a lighter action rod with a softer tip and lighter monofilament line. One thing to keep a close eye on is the line near the lure. Their teeth can nick up the line really fast so a heavy floro leader might be a good idea too.

As far as boat control, I had us on spot lock all day on Friday. The kids would cast the jigs back behind the boat and either slowly work it in to the back of the boat or they would just shove it in a rod holder and wait for a walleye to pick it up. The rod holder did most of the heavy lifting here and worked well. Caught 70 fish that way.

On Saturday we started the day on spot lock and shifted to dragging jigs. I didn’t want to do this initially because I know there are areas with rock and logs so retying constantly wasn’t going to be ideal at all. We started out zigzagging across the river and slipping down current at .2-.4 mph. That worked really well but it was a challenge with other boats around. At the very end of the day we dragged up river at .3-.4 mph and this worked really well also. Actually seemed to be far more productive than spot lock.

As was already mentioned, plastics weren’t as good as minnows those days so you just have to be ready for minnows or plastics. My experience has been that plastics usually outfish minnows but this trip was different. Be flexible here.

We ran 7ft mlxf or mlf rods, 10 pound braid to a 12 pound flouro leader just like I do on most my river jig rods. Pitching plastics was our game. The retrieve is what we noticed mattered, 1 day they wanted slow light hops back to the boat the next they wanted a slow and steady retrieve. The 1 day it didn’t matter they just wanted to eat. At one point that day we could pitch up river down river to the sides up shallow or deep and they would crush it. Minnows brought us smaller fish so we tried to stick with plastics mainly. Already can’t wait for next season. But I have been kicking g around the idea of a rainy river fishing opener.
Our number 1 bait of choice was a moon eye jig in 1/4 some times 3/8 matched with a all white eye candy paddle tail. That set up out fished everything else for us. I stuck with a pink or green jig head and the kid used every color available, didn’t see much change for bite besides they really liked white plastics.

This is so crazy to me. We had our best luck pitching jigs, but light. Usually 1/8 oz. We were using 3/32 for a good while when the wind was down.

Cody Meyers wrote:

This is so crazy to me. We had our best luck pitching jigs, but light. Usually 1/8 oz. We were using 3/32 for a good while when the wind was down.

The week I fished averaged 20mph plus winds. You couldn’t feel anything if you went lighter then 1/4

Cody Meyers wrote:

This is so crazy to me. We had our best luck pitching jigs, but light. Usually 1/8 oz. We were using 3/32 for a good while when the wind was down.

The family used 5/16 and I used a combination of that and 3/8 with B fish-n pulse-r plastic. These have a lot of drag in the water so a heavier jig is needed to get down. I personally prefer solid contact with the bottom and believe the added weight makes more noise when it hits bottom triggering bites.

The kids and wife don’t have any concept of feeling bottom so the 5/16 had a better tendency to roll along the bottom which got a lot of bites. If you were to pitch a lighter jig up river and just blindly give it some pops until a fish picks it up, it would be a solid strategy as well. It would be a little more difficult to fish lighter jigs behind the boat because the current would make it rise up.

Bearcat89 wrote:

The week I fished averaged 20mph plus winds. You couldn’t feel anything if you went lighter then 1/4

The solution to high wind is heavier jig to maintain contact with the bottom. I couldn’t imagine using anything lighter than 1/4 in any significant wind.

I tend to lean toward heavier line which requires more weight as well.

My 6 year old who is Mr. Independent setup in the front of the boat casting in all directions and just randomly reeling and jigging caught a bunch of fish that way. I imagine he was casting up river and sort of let it just roll down along the bottom. Much like what someone with a lighter jig might do.

Sounds like my pattern was just like everyone else’s. Heavy jigs with large darker blue green plastic was very good the last few days. Pitch it towards the center of the river, lift, drift and let it thunk bottom. Most hits came crashing in right before it would hit bottom.

Well maybe not exactly like everyone elses approach.

walleyesforme wrote:

They didn’t say progressive was necessarily bad, they just said it’s a lot longer process and way more hoops to jump through and everything takes way longer. I’m not sure how other insurance companies work but I was also able to buy my wrecked lower unit back for $100 which was nice. A new prop shaft and it would be good enough for a spare in a pinch.

I’m not sure what extra hoops there are but so far it’s been completely painless. I called this morning and started the claim process. Phone call was 5 minutes and 11 seconds. They called me back a few minutes ago to get the details of the incident and told me someone would be out within a week to look at it. They said this is a longer lead time than usual because claims are higher than usual because people are reporting claims from damage during storage.

She asked if I wanted a check to take it wherever I wanted or if I wanted to take it somewhere then they can work with the shop. She said I didn’t need an answer that right now. Will wait for the adjuster to see what needs to be done.

The woman on the phone was actually really knowledgeable about prop, skeg and LU damage.

Oh, and found out that I have a diminishing deductible so right now my deductible is $125.

Mike W wrote:

Sounds like my pattern was just like everyone else’s. Heavy jigs with large darker blue green plastic was very good the last few days. Pitch it towards the center of the river, lift, drift and let it thunk bottom. Most hits came crashing in right before it would hit bottom.

Well maybe not exactly like everyone elses approach.

You’ve seen me fish up there. This is my bread and butter. Its not for everyone because it can be tedious and takes a lot of attention to do it well.

You know the bite is really on when 1/2 your bites come before it ever hits bottom after hitting the water and you get multiple hits and misses on the same cast.

Yep. We often joked about “only one fish per cast”. Had a few days it would of been a lot easier to count the casts that didn’t connect with fish. Dustin did a better job of keeping track of how many caught in his boat for the week and came up with something around 1250 walleyes. All I know is we caught alot.

BG i don’t know if i’ve ever seen a prop look that bad and still have all the blades on it.

Bigdill, go get an estimate at a shop that you want to do the repair work. Progressive is going to do their estimate using software and it likely won’t be close to real world cost.

You should have the shop look at the power head too. A rock hit that bad could have did internal motor damage. I’ve seen plenty of motors totaled from a lower unit collision.

I hope it goes well for you. Progressive has a solid watercraft policy but you may have a battle with an adjuster to get paid what the contract owes. Lots of boat shops won’t even work with you on repairs for an insurance claim if progressive is the company and there is a reason for that. I think Dan handles a lot of the boat claims in the state. If you get him, good luck. The guy is a prick.

chuck100 wrote:

BG i don’t know if i’ve ever seen a prop look that bad and still have all the blades on it.

I saw the rocks coming so I throttled down and hit just as the boat was coming off plane. Then I had to motor away from the rocks while I was trying to raise the motor. It wasn’t a single hit at wot. I can see how the blades could shear off at high speed but with the current I was probably only going about 8 mph ground speed.

I followed my trails from previous years but clearly the 3’ drop in river level was enough to make all the difference. It was just dumb. Next time I’ll need to idle past that area instead of being so cocky.

FinnyDinDin wrote:

Bigdill, go get an estimate at a shop that you want to do the repair work. Progressive is going to do their estimate using software and it likely won’t be close to real world cost.

You should have the shop look at the power head too. A rock hit that bad could have did internal motor damage. I’ve seen plenty of motors totaled from a lower unit collision.

The last time I made a claim for my trailer tire blowout I recall them telling me to just give them a call back and send invoice and they would send a check for any costs over the estimate. They made it sound really painless. I have no reason to think otherwise since everything has been so easy so far.

I’ll definitely be asking the shop about the power head. Thanks for the input.

Sounds like the bite was whatever you casted out. Kudos to those that went this year. Sounds like it was a heck of a year to go. Jealous for sure.

Anyone going for sturgeon this weekend?

The boys are trying to talk me into a trip and they want to bring a buddy from school.

Should be an interesting time.

A trio of third grade boys, a tent, a old red Lund boat, and fish bigger than they are

Wish me luck if we go, it’ll be a trip to remember for sure

Better tie those boys off so they don’t get pulled in by the Sturgeon. Sounds like the bite was going strong on Monday. We have a campsite reserved at Franz in a couple weeks for Sturg fishing. Those boys of yours sure are going to have some fish stories to tell at school. In the past we have even seen plenty of Sturgeon caught from shore at Birchdale.

Last Friday the kids put down their rods for lunch and I plopped in 2 sturgeon rigs. Within 5 minutes they were both going. One was a PB 68″, the other was a mid 40’s. We targeted them for less than 5 minutes. This was in just a random spot while walleye fishing. I wasn’t seeking finding an honey hole or anything. Isabelle did most of the work pulling in the big one but I had to intervene several times. The kids hooked into I think 3 or 4 on their walley rods. We landed one of them.

Suprisingly I did see a couple surface in spite of the water temps being 42-43. In my opinion the bit was strong.

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We will be back up in a couple weeks for a quick weekend of sturgeon fishing. And same thing as Matt, we stopped for lunch and both had sturgeon on within minutes. That last night we fished we targeted them and caught 13 in 3.5 hours of fishing and thatbwas right by camp, in a random 10ft deep spot

We finished are trip up sturgeon fishing Monday. We tried a few spots that tend to hold fish year round but were only catching small fish so we started driving upriver with the side imaging going and spotlocking above fish when we saw them. Ended up with 20 for the afternoon. A pair 57s for big fish for the day.

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Progressive and Lower Unit damage.
I hit a log that bent my prop shaft and mangled the pinion gear inside. The prop and lower unit looked fine. Once progressive seen the pictures from the outside, they hired a private adjuster/investigator to take it apart. He determined it was old age and that I didnt hit anything. The marina asked about how the prop shaft got bent and he said the pinion gear going mangled everything making shaft bend????. I had a witness in the boat and another who watched us hit and lose control of the boat.
I talked to a lawyer and essentially I would have paid as much to get money out of them as it was to just buy a $5k lower.
The investigator told me Progressive would owe him just north of $3,000 when it was all said and done….. he also said he was receiving a lot of work from Progressive as they were pushing some add on for your policy that would automatically include lower unit coverage (I never confirmed this, just what he said).
That was 2018. I switched companies and am not looking back.