Add a pan fried piece of salmon to your BLT. I like to season with salt, pepper, and mesquite steak seasoning. Obviously fry the salmon in the bacon grease. Gotta have thick cut bacon, tomatoes and lettuce fresh from the garden, white bread, and mayo.
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X2 on what BigWerm said. If you’re gonna be in a sleeper the day bite is probably going to be pretty slow so you’ll for sure want to move around if possible. The last 2 years I’ve done a 3 day ice trip to Leech and hired Phil for a day. Very reasonably priced and he takes care of everything (rods, tackle, bait, transportation, portables.) He had us on fish both times, even during a brutal cold front last year when it was like -20 for a few days straight. Ended up catching my pb walleye at 26″ in that weather. We did perch and pike on our first trip and walleye on the second. If we hadn’t hired him, both trips would have been busts. Well worth it. Book him early in your trip and it will help a ton the last couple of days.
Well I figured I should give an update from our trip. We were planning on going to Willmar to fish some smaller lakes there for perch and eyes. My buddy had some info from a coworker of a decent bite going on down there. Then early last week when we saw the forecast for the weekend we were a bit worried about being able to get his wheelhouse on and off the ice with the warm temps and rain. So we figured we needed to head north to play it safe. We decided on Leech Lake. We also talked another one of our friends to tag along. He had never really ice fished before.
I called Phil Bauerly to see if by chance he still had any openings for the holiday weekend. Luckily he was available all day on Sunday, so we booked him for a day of perch and pike fishing after he told me the walleye bite was real slow and it was a short bite window in the evening.
We set up the wheelhouse in Walker Bay, south of Cedar Point. We were in 25-27′ of water. Friday night we caught three small walleyes and an eel pout. Only one fish was caught jigging, everything else was on the rattle reels.
Saturday morning we landed another dink walleye. After breakfast we took a drive and went out to Shores at Pine Point to access the main lake. The guy at the access said people were having decent luck for perch on the Grand View flats and by Goose Island. We started out on the Grand View flats and had holes drilled from 11-16′ deep. All we got there were some tiny perch. After a few hours of hopping around there we drove out to Goose Island with the same results. Our big catch there was 4-5″ crayfish. We packed it in and drove back to camp, made supper and watched the Wild game in the wheelhouse by using chromecast. We caught a few more small walleyes in the house that night, but no keepers.
Sunday morning we got our biggest walleye of the weekend at a whopping 14″. We then met up with Phil for our day with him. What a sweet set-up he’s got. We drove out on the ice on his snowmobiles and flip over otters towed behind. He had all the gear we needed the only thing we needed to bring with was our lunch. There wasn’t anyone else fishing where we had set up. We did have a couple smaller groups of people set up in the vicinity throughout the day, but the area we were was obviously less pressured than other spots on the lake. He brought us to a shallow flat that had a weed bed He started popping holes and set us up in the otters while he drilled some more holes to put set lines in. We were in 5-6′ of water and we were sight fishing without any electronics. It was a ton of fun. We had to play keep away from all of the smaller perch and wait for the bigger ones to run through and drop them bait on them. I had one small perch chase my spoon all the way to the top of the hole and it actually hit my spoon as I was lifting it out of the water!
He had homemade rod holders that he set his dead sticks on. The dead sticks had the Okuma bait feeder reels on them. We were catching perch right away and it took him a while to get all of the dead sticks set up because the first couple he set were getting hit. We took turns fishing in the otters and watching the dead sticks. We had steady action the whole time we were out there. There were quite a few pike that were cruising through, too. We caught three of them and my buddy had one break his line. Towards the end of the day I was in the otter and saw a fish coming from the side of my hole. I thought that it looked like it had big whiskers, well it ended up being about a 30″ pike with a 6″ perch t-boned in its mouth. That was pretty cool to see. We ended the day with 37 keepers between 9″ and 12.5″, plus the three pike that were each about 24″. We fried up the pike for supper that night and decided to pack up early and head home Sunday night so we didn’t have to deal with the rain on Monday morning. Ice was still very thick, but the top was getting very sloppy by the time we left. The plowed roads were holding quite a bit of water, but there was hardly any snow left on Sunday so it was better to drive off the roads.
Deciding to hire Phil for the day on Sunday ended up being a smart choice. He salvaged the fishing portion of our trip. We had a blast and we can’t say enough good things about Phil. He was a great guide, very knowledgeable, put us on fish, and had top notch gear for us to use. His rates are very reasonable. I’d recommend anyone looking to fish on Leech to give him a call.
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Attending the get together would be fun, but we are locked into our dates for this winter. So if we go LOW route would you go out from fourmile, Arnesens, or take the long drive up to the islands? Should we be looking for mud or reefs?
I think we are looking to stay in MN. We had talked about maybe trying Devils Lake, but that was going to be too long of a drive for my buddy. Winnipeg would be a sweet trip, but I don’t think either of us are prepared for that. A trip there is definitely on the bucket list.
Lake of the woods would be alright with me. I’ve been there twice through Sportsman’s Lodge. Last trip was about 5 years ago. At that time of the year would it be better to fish the south shore or head out by the islands? I think the last time I was there it was around the same time frame and they took us out by the islands in the bombers.
I’ve only been to Mille Lacs once and that was probably 3-4 years ago and that was really slow, one fish for a three day trip, between three people. I don’t remember the time of the year, but the mother in-law booked a sleeper through Appledoorns. That was before I had my own portable and auger so we were stuck in the same spot and they wouldn’t move us. But yeah all the reports and pictures coming out of Mille Lacs this year really has my interest. I’ve been a bit worried about the dates we picked, but that was the only time that was going to work out for both of us.
