I have a set of talon grips on the way till I decide what I’m going to do. Merica eagle were you able to get it sanded evenly before you restippled it?

Dbright the ice was consistent where we were at. It was about 18” with bottom 12” clear and the top 6” cloudy. We only went to the areas that Channel Marine told us to go. Being that it was our first time on the water there I wasn’t willing to venture to far off corse. The few that went over to Cedar said the it was about the same thickness.

We ended up using the winter access and parking on horseshoe. Once on the lake we parked the truck and used a four wheeler just because we’re not familiar with the lakes. Stop at Channel Marine in Richmond and they helped us navigate the areas we wanted to fish and where to avoid, very helpful. Horseshoe had up to 18” of mixed clear/cloudy ice where we were. A part of our group did go over to Cedar for a couple hours and marked fish, just couldn’t get any through the hole. We did well for first timers on the horseshoe side. I think next time we’ll bring more bait options. Marked fish the entire time it was just difficult to get em to commit. I had no idea cats went up and down the water column that often, almost like slow moving tullibee. Hope to get up there again this winter. Cats are 10x more fun to fish for then walleye on ice and open water in my opinion.

Thanks for the info everyone. I think the game plan will be to start from the SE launch on cedar and cross over the road at the winter access area with a four wheeler. It looks like this would probably the best route and will cover some fishable ground in the process. Thanks again for the replies.

Last day out for the year yesterday and hunted the Mississippi. Saw hundreds of geese, and fair amount of mallards and golden eye. Everything was decoy shy for us but we did get a six pack of geese to commit and dropped them all. It was beautiful out on the river and already looking forward to next year.

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Good to know eagle. I’m actually gonna check a couple of spots during the day tomorrow to get a feel for it before I decide to hunt. I think I found a shore spot where I could set up an A frame on public land. I’m not as dumb as I used to be, hopefully, so I try to think of everything that could go wrong when I’m looking at a new river. But if you’re saying it’s unforgiving I believe because you post Mississippi reports and that river has handed me my hind end more than once.

I was thinking about trying the cannon river this week with the cold temps and have a couple spots picked out. Never tried it. Usually I hunt the Mississippi this time of year but I sold my boat this spring and only have a canoe. Has anyone out there hunted it late season with any luck? I’ve been looking at the stretch east of cannon falls

Hunted the backwaters today. Had a fair amount of mallards working our spread but they were definitely weary birds. Got 3 drakes and a lone goose. Also another bird that we couldn’t find. Probably a woody. They were done flying by 1000. It was a beautiful morning on the river, what else can you ask for

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Spent 3 days hunting zone 1 this week. Put 1500 miles on the truck from the time I left St. Paul until I was back home so we did a ton of scouting. Not much for mallards but the diver hunting was amazing once you found them. Lots of bluebills and canvasbacks. Last morning we hunted the blizzard was starting to settle in. Made for an amazing hunt.

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Gonefishin’ I don’t think I could of let that one go either without giving them an earful. I thought the entire point of CPR was to quickly get fish back into the water to catch another day. One of my favorite fish pics in the last few years was a true double that my Dad and I caught. Also we weren’t worried about a pretty sunset either, our interest was letting them swim off.

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Thanks for the input guys. I just noticed that I posted it in the hunting section so I’m gonna repost it on the fishing side

Sold

I’ll let it go for $225

Not huge fish but a 24 # my buddy caught while we were out last week. The part that’s interesting is the cut going across it’s head. Almost like it got ran over by a prop. The cut was deep enough you could see it’s skull. But it wasn’t deep enough to stop its appetite.

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I forget to mention that perch were a day bite for us and the Wallace were from 1500-1900. Also Navionics was off a bit when we were out in the middle so we drilled probably 40 holes to mark the structure with our electronics. Hopefully this helps.

Perch bite was excellent in 12-15 fow, most of the time we were using just one pole because they were biting that well. A lot of smaller perch but we did keep about a dozen that were eater size. One thing we did figure out later in the day, thanks to the resort owner, was that if you kept your bait 1’-2’ above the fish you’d catch bigger ones. You wouldn’t catch as many doing this but the quality of fish was worth it. Temp was in the -20s that day. The second day we went for walleye and fished a random hump out in the middle of the lake. We drove about a mile off any plowed road just to get away from anyone and it payed off well. We caught 6 eyes with a size range of 16”-23”. Not a lot of fish but they were healthy. Also got into a few pout. When we went out of the NE we went out of The Pines Resort, awesome people. The day we went for eyes we went out of Denny’s on the south side, again awesome people. Denny’s were the ones that told us that we could make it across the lake. Granted of course watching for changes in ice conditions.

Thanks for the info guys. I would consider it a very successful hunt. We hunted mostly between Medina and the chase lake reserve. Stuck to small spreads, no more than 30 birds at a time. Got mostly divers but I have no problem with that. We actually hunted big water the entire trip and took the suggestions of walking farther and scouting more. The first day up there we didn’t hunt but put 200 miles on the back roads scouting. The last hunt we drug our gear and canoe through 50-70 yards of brush then canoed over 100 hundred yards out to an island. It was an exhausting day but the diver hunting was absolutely amazing.