Have Lacrosse boots gotten better with cracking? I bought a pair about 15 years ago and they cracked 2 years later. I patched them up a few times and used them another couple years. My Dryshods cracked in year 5. I perched them with flex seal tape and they are waterproof again.
Good reminder.
Remember to put a carbon monoxide detector in your garage as well. Two of my kids and myself were hospitalized due to carbon monoxide poisoning caused by an ice block in the garage heater vent. My two year old son quit breathing after roughly 5 minutes of exposure and my 4 year old daughter went unconscious after roughly 7-8 minutes. I had no idea anything was wrong until my son went unconscious and I assumed he was having some type of seizure. After calling 911 and doing CPR on my son, I went back to find my daughter passed out in her car seat. We went through treatment and all of us recovered, but nobody should have to go through that.
This guy came through this morning as we were getting ready for work.
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First good backyard buck of the season came through yesterday.
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Area 155 3 miles from Mille Lacs Lake. On a calm day I can hear boats throttling up leaving Liberty Beach access.
If this guy shows up Saturday, that would be great.
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I have the Yeti gloves and they are durable. The problem I have is that they must not breathe as my hands sweat quickly and then my fingers freeze. I had a pair of Cabelas gloves that I wore for years and never had this issue. Unfortunately I left them on the snowmobile trailer and lost them somewhere down the road.
Mille Lacs can be good all season, but in my mind the best way to catch numbers of Walleyes is fishing the sundown bite the first few weeks of the season. A good one two punch is a bobber and a leech on one line and pitching a jig/minnow with the other. Adjust if the fish show a preference.
My last time out was 5 days ago. We fished the West side and found Smallmouth on the rocks in 10-18 feet.
Cool. Are there shoulders?
As others have stated, you can play the wind and move around the lake. Don’t rule out the North end if you have North winds. There is good structure up there as well.
There is a good bite on sucker minnows that time of year as well.
We had a good day Friday on the West side trolling crankbaits in 15-20’. There is sand grass floating in the water so we intentionally fished a smaller stretch that was cleaner and cleaned our baits often. We had 5 in the old 21-23” slot and one in the current 18-20”.
It’s a large area roughly halfway between Long Point and Garden Island. I believe it gets its name because that is where “Lake of the Woods” is written on the map.
See you at the Warrior Shootout next Saturday?
It looks like we have a number of Veterans on IDO. Thank you for your service.
I’m an insurance agent and I mainly work with health insurance benefits. I encourage every Veteran that I meet to talk to their County Veteran Service Officer to see what benefits they have available.
If you are a Veteran on Medicare and are entitled to VA Health benefits, you should look into a Medicare Advantage plan. They do not interfere with your VA benefits, most plans will help pay for a portion of your Medicare premium, and many have extra benefits that are not offered to everyone through the VA. If you have any questions about these plans, feel free to send me a private message. Advice is always free and I’d be happy to steer you in the right direction. These plans do fit the needs of probably 90% of the Veteran I meet, but there are some circumstances where they don’t.
We used that tool often growing up and yes it works. For deep hooked fish I use a forceps and go through the gill, but this tool works very similar.
I will do my best to describe. This tool works best for when the fish has swallowed the hook but you can see the hook by pulling slightly on the line. With the fish in the net over the side of the boat or on the floor of the boat, pull the line tight with your left hand. Hold the tool like you would hold a pistol in your right hand and pull the tool back toward you along the line so the wire guard on the front grabs the line. Now the line should run up and down inside the gap on the front of the tool. Run the tool down the line and into the fishes mouth. Keep the line tight in your left hand. Ideally you will be pulling the head of the fish up off of the floor. Now point the tool straight into the fishes mouth and as far down the line as you can into the throat. Pull the trigger. You may have to do it a few times. The fishes head should fall back into the net or onto the floor and the hook should pop out and hook onto the tool. Now you can simply wiggle the hook free from the tool.
I hope that makes sense. It might sound pretty inhumane but it is effective at removing hooks and giving the fish the best chance to survive. Obviously the quicker and less handling the better.
The tool used in the video is different than the original tool in question. Do not follow that video.
We used that tool often growing up and yes it works. For deep hooked fish I use a forceps and go through the gill, but this tool works very similar.
I will do my best to describe. This tool works best for when the fish has swallowed the hook but you can see the hook by pulling slightly on the line. With the fish in the net over the side of the boat or on the floor of the boat, pull the line tight with your left hand. Hold the tool like you would hold a pistol in your right hand and pull the tool back toward you along the line so the wire guard on the front grabs the line. Now the line should run up and down inside the gap on the front of the tool. Run the tool down the line and into the fishes mouth. Keep the line tight in your left hand. Ideally you will be pulling the head of the fish up off of the floor. Now point the tool straight into the fishes mouth and as far down the line as you can into the throat. Pull the trigger. You may have to do it a few times. The fishes head should fall back into the net or onto the floor and the hook should pop out and hook onto the tool. Now you can simply wiggle the hook free from the tool.
I hope that makes sense. It might sound pretty inhumane but it is effective at removing hooks and giving the fish the best chance to survive. Obviously the quicker and less handling the better.
I have a Skeeter 2060 and bought the yellow harness pictured above. It tangles with my kicker so is worthless for my setup. I’m open to other suggestions.
I’ve run 3 boats with Ulterras and overall they have worked great. There has only been one issue I couldn’t resolve with watching a YouTube video and making a quick fix. The issue I couldn’t resolve was a result of one of my 3 batteries going bad, so not an issue with the Ulterra. There are many great resources on YouTube.
I’ve had the same thing happen a few times and I follow this procedure to fix it.
We have a fox den in the backyard so they don’t last long.
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Since you asked this specifically on the Winnibigosh forum, it makes sense. I unfortunately haven’t been out there in a few years, but I think the outer weed line is around 13 feet.
Had a 6 hour guide trip today. Strong winds kept us tight to the West shore so my clients wouldn’t get sick. We caught a mixed bad of Walleyes and Smallies in 15-20’ scattered rock. Slip bobbers and trolling worked equally well.
About any slip bobber will work for traditional bobber fishing. My traditional walleye setup is a 7/8” thill pro series, split shot, and 1/32 ounce jig. I use this setup when we are anchored/spot locked and fishing out the sides and back of the boat.
I am still trying to find the perfect bobber for hunting down or sharp shooting fish with forward facing sonar. On clear bodies of water fish might spook as far as 60’ from the boat, so I need to make long casts. Add any wind into the equation, and line tangles are very real. Tangles happen mainly when casting into the wind which is very common when sharp shooting. I want a bobber setup that I can cast 60-80’, doesn’t tangle, and allows the line to pass through the bobber as quickly as possible.
My best setup so far is a 1” Thill Pro Series with an 1/8 ounce egg sinker, bead, swivel, leader, and a 1/32 or 1/16 ounce jig head. I have setups with both braid and mono main lines. The wobble bobbers work but tangle more in my experience. I thought the Kalins bobber might be better, but it tangles as much if not more and the paint quality is poor.
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Review of the new Kalin’s bobber:
Pros
Easy to run line through.
Works as a bobber should.
Cons
Yellow is hard to see on the water in many circumstances.
Tangles in any sort of wind especially when actually “sharp-shooting” into the wind.(all bobbers do tangle but thill pro series tangle maybe a tenth as often as these)
Paint cracked the first day I used it.
Paint has completely chipped off of the bottom from the sinker hitting it.
I am going back to Thill Pro Series for all of my rods. I can deal with some tangles, but not more than 50% of my casts. I run a sliding sinker and leader to a jig just as they sell in their bobber kit.
There are literally fish all over the lake, but in the last week there was a major push out to the deep gravel and mud flats. On my guide trips I typically start with traditional techniques and while my clients are fishing I will look around with FFS. If I locate fish, I’ll ask my clients to cast in that direction. Once they get the hang of it, most of my clients want to take over the FFS or tell them where to cast or even have me cast for them. They are out there to catch fish. If a tool will help them catch more fish, that’s what they want to use. A high percentage of trips end with the clients huddled around the screen waiting to throw on the next mark.
If I’m fishing a tournament or by myself it’s almost 100% FFS related. It’s amazing on a clear lake like Mille Lacs to watch how the fishes mood changes when a boat gets with 50 feet of them. Yes traditional techniques still work, but I can tell you from watching how fish react on FFS that most of the fish in an area move around the boat and your leech dragging behind it. When we do pull bait around now, it’s with even longer leaders and lighter weights to get them away from the boat. I’ll often make S turns as well so the boat goes around the fish, but we can swing the baits through the fish.
My friend owns a cabin on the north end and has a pontoon with sea legs. They’ve never had an issue with it moving. I noticed that the neighbors have ground anchors that they put in the sand, attach a mooring buoy, and then tie the front and rear of the pontoon down to them.
Regarding the lake level, I have also heard that the new rock bed at the outlet of Mille Lacs is lower than the previous concrete wall.
I use a plastic quick change snap and a bead. For hooks I use Gamakatsu wide gaps.
Two of my kids are traveling to see it with their Aunt and Uncle. They have decided on Indiana. My wife and I thought about going. I tried to put together a last minute Lake Erie trip to watch it from the lake while fishing, but couldn’t sync up enough days to make it worth it.
I’d be interested in a picture.
