Ya it was sad – almost as bad as losing a good dog – boat never did anything but go where I wanted to go. Time to move on and get ready for the next chapter in my pursuit of many more good trolling days…

Hi Jon – long time no see! Anyway, just said my goodbyes…

Ya, thanks a lot Brian. I’ll add that to the thousand comments I’ve had over the past 11 years regarding my “big tub”. It took a while but I did master the art of the ITS while sitting on my butt on my air ride – it’s all about boat control – can be done with any boat (even without a tiller. Lots of great memories with it. wish I had kept a count of how many fish came into that boat

Yes Jeff, it WAS a blessing that no one got in the way of flying debris. Additionally, the closest vehicle behind us was an out of service ambulance the driver of which reacted very well. He saw the whole thing unfolding and braked while pulling into the center of the road – he had his lights flashing blocking traffic long before I ever got the truck stopped. Also, I’ll take this opportunity to air a pet peeve: Pulling trailers with too small a tow vehicle. My boat and trailer fully loaded weighed in at 3800# A full size half ton (Chevy in this case) was barely adequate to keep me on the road with the weight of the load swinging me around. Less than 15 minutes after crash, a boat nearly the size of mine went by being towed by a Jeep Liberty. Think about where that rig would have ended up in a situation like mine. In my opinion, there is no substitute for a vehicle of sufficient size (weight) for controlling that kind of a load. Even power is secondary to having enough weight to be able to control the load.

Thanks for all the excellent replies and PM’s! The boys had a place secured by 8:00 last night (one of the 4 suggested to me – not sure which one)
Mike

Thankfully no one hurt – full size pick up which I somehow managed to keep on the road. (Certainly some divine intervention there) State Farm has been great! Luckily, in addition to the coverage on the boat, I had a rider that covered my gear – depreciated value but really helped take the sting out of it. 8 out of 12 rods in the boat were shattered along with a number of reels and misc. other stuff some of which just flew out and not found. My favorite rod of all time (a very old Fenwick given to me by a good friend years ago)survived unscathed even though a nearly new Shimano reel on it was crushed. I considered that a real blessing as it probaly was the one thing I couldn’t put a true value on nor could it be easily replaced.

No such luck Wade – on the way to Red Wing just after 5AM

Highway 52 just South of Pine Island by the old elk farm.

Best of luck to you – hope you are blessed as I have been – 4 trips in last two weeks have been a blast! In my book, things are certainly headed in the right direction.

As far as technique? Typical (for me) only a half day to fish – get lazy- throw out the cranks. JSR 5’s – brighter colors early in the day – darker later on. Best color yesterday was the firetiger early and the red crawdad late. Most fish caught in 7-8 FOW at speeds ranging form 1.4 to 2.4

Did well Sunday and yesterday on Pool 4 pulling crankbaits. Found one spot absolutely stacked and threw out the bait for a while – seemed like an endless supply-no real size – most in 17 or so range. Both trips came up empty on big ones – a few 20 inchers was best I could do. I did find these last two trips that they seem to like a little less speed – right in the 1.8-2.3 GPS with variation once again being the key. Sunday was cloudy and did the best with darker colors (baby bass and red crawdad being the best) while Wedenesday saw the bright colors catching the majority. Best fishing for me Wednesday was down near the head of the lake. Fish this week seemed to be all over the place depth wise with fish caught from 3-12 FOW. I did target several shallow spots where there were a lot of shad jumping and managed to have great fun with numerous bass. Also interesting to see were several spectacular sturgeon leaps (primarily up by the dam.) Maybe not worth mentioning, I haven’t caught a measureable sauger in 3 weeks. Several of the spots I regularily hit normally have good numbers of eaters.
Note to briank – had a wonderful time with two more good sized catfish yesterday – both once again absolutely inhaling parrots.

All I know is, invited over to a friend’s house to watch the game (he’s from New Orleans) So not only will I be in hostile territory, he’s having fresh gator flown up to barbecue for supper. Believe I’ll take some of Sunday’s Walleye catch along just to make sure there’s something I like to eat…

Amen to lifting some weights. Holding that writhing slimy cat was as much as I could handle. Note the grimace (not a smile) on my face – barely able to hang on – going to have to get BrianK to work with me on how to properly handle the big uns. Maybe Kim needs to work out – she’s the one catching em – she can just handle em.

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More bad news – less than a half hour after releasing this giant (and yes Kim brought it all the way to the boat by herself), she landed our biggest walleye of the day – a plump 26 1/2 incher that weighed in at exactly 7 pounds – I’ll post a picture of that one as soon as soon as one of the kids shows me how to email a pic off a cell phone. We also hooked into a second flathead nearly as big as this one. Same crank as this one (JSR 5 – Parrot) 15# Powerpro longlining in 8 feet of water 2 1/2 mph GPS. Nice batch of 15-17 inch eaters – all in all, a most entertaining day! BTW, Kim’s a hoot – when her dad asked her why she threw it back, she told him “to raise the water level back up” (laughed so hard, bout peed my pants) Thanks Dean for the great pics! Kind of a big deal for Kim – her biggest fish ever!

Definitely NOT time for a new truck. Any of the trucks mentioned,(Dodge, Ford, Chev etc.) properly taken care of will provide far more miles than what yours currently has. Obviously, there will be parts wear out. My last 4 trucks went 418,00 (was still running – junked because of excessive rust) 318,000 (still running), 260,000 (gave to my father in law – still runs like new) 284,000 (just talked to guy that bought it – running great) Also, while fuel pressure regulator does cause starting and running problems, if truck runs fine after starting, I would more likely suspect check valve on fuel pump. Even with encoder motor and other repairs, still cheaper than buying a new one.

Have seen a couple of whitetails in that enclosure – sure hope they were taken out. Is it true that elk herd owners are required to destroy deer that somehow manage to get into one of their herd enclosures?

I had to weld a gusset on the bottom of the axle on my trailer – just not heavy enough. After ruining 2 sets of tires in 4 years, I have now gone 5 on one set of tires. We actually held down ends of axle and jacked up center (past straight by 1/2 inch) and welded in gusset – turned out to be the exact correct repair. I complained about mine when it was quite new and got a replacement axle – manufacturer thought it was faulty – turns out it was just plain under rated. In retrospect, my big tub should have had a dual axle trailer in the first place

Pretty ignorant about squirrel hunting – never knew there was such a thing as a call. They are so thick where we hunt, I wish I had something to scare them off without scaring anything else – the noise the squirrels and turkeys make makes it virtually impossible to ever hear a deer coming. The main reason I am responding to this post is yesterday morning while in my blind at first light, I caught movement off to my right. At first glance, I thought it was skunk going up a tree. It turned out to be a squirrel that was nearly all white on the topside and fairly dark on the bottom. Piebald? In any case, really neat (and fairly big) squirrel.

Guess I don’t understand the problem with a “biscuit” I did replace the insert in mine this year as it looked a bit tattered after 3 plus years. Both of my boys and I use them and are all very accurate (and extremely consistent) I guess I feel it is a matter of personal preference with the important factors being draw point, arm angle etc.

I found about the same – activity very limited Saturday (only saw 5) Decided to go out yesterday afternoon and saw none. Very first 0 sighting day for me all season. Very excited about major change coming in the weather – something about sweating for a full hour in my stand after the hike in that just doesn’t seem right on Oct 12th

I also do the majority of my practice at 40 yards. All of my stands are deep in the woods (no perimeter stands at all – I leave those to the boys) My longest clear shot in any of my stands is 34 yards and I have only needed to make that shot once – it was a clean kill. I do agree with practicing beyond what you need to shoot – makes the short ones a “chip shot”

Definitely one to watch – if you get a better look at him(daylight) try to pick out a distinguishing characteristic – perhaps an unusual marking. This will give you a reference for next year to see how his growth progresses. Hunting the same area every year gives you unique opportunities to watch different deer. We have several that are so easy to recognize that we actually have given them names. As an example of how we use comparisions for management, we have a deer we call dum dum that has only managed a very small 6 point rack for the third year in a row. He is now a very large healthy big bodied deer. We intend to encourage a first time hunter coming out for the early gun season to take this deer out. We already have a stand set smack in the middle of his known travel circle and have seen him near this spot a dozen times this year

That is awesome! What fun! I do know your heart rate – I had a doe step on a blind once – thought she was going to take it down. Keep the great videos coming!

Guess I could mention that deer was taken to Larry’s taxidermy in High Forest. Hanging weight was right at 240# – Larry estimated that walking weight was near 280#. Larry stated that it is by far the biggest bodied deer he has seen this year.

The deer population in our area is incredible to say the least. We keep a log of all the different (distinguishable) bucks that we see. The current count is 16. Of these, we agree that 4 (counting this one) are shooters. Total sightings of the 16 now stands at 77. Unbelievably, this buck had not been previously seen by any of us. To put it all in perspective, we hunt a total of 300 acres of which barely 40 acres is wooded. If you were to do the math of the population per square mile in our area, I think it would equal an astounding number.

Was wondering if my phone went bad. Also having the same problem – real irritating where we are deer hunting as we have lost our signal there completely. I had heard from someone else that Alltel did not renew some contracts to use additional towers. They also are charging both ways on text messaging now because of losing revenue after allowing agreements with other networks to expire. Whether or not any of the above is fact, the service is the worst I have ever had in 25 years of having a mobile phone

S&M Salvage and Marine in Oronoco Minnesota – very reasonable

I lost the upper half of a brand new Cabela’s 12′ trolling rod – blew out of the boat

Oh, and I should mention – the jig on it is a dead giveaway – nearly 100% certain it was painted by a certain guy from down Wabasha way (HINT _ he has a nephew named Michael that fishes all summer with him)

I will clean up rod and try to identify brand – it has a couple hundred zebra mussels attached to it – have had 4 replies (including private messages) – seems that’s a popular spot for losing rods. I did receive 1 PM that properly ID’d the reel so will see if rod matches description(brand)