Any results from the pooh bear tourney yesterday?

Great ideas!!!! We are renting a pontoon for the week and will have two kayaks a canoe and a small rowboat for water activities. Not a big “fishing family” other then taking the kids out to catch a few sunnies and a few cruises around the lake. As far as the beer pong idea, I think that there will be plenty of adult beverages!! The house has a full bar with 8 stools, a double wide beer fridge, a pool table, ping pong table and two TV’s. I’ve never stayed around Grand Rapids any sights or tourist type spots that we have to put on the to do list?

I don’t think its’s officially open yet. However I did use it yesterday and its nice but its not good for higher water. I you choose to use it in the next week you’d better bring your hip boots and a buddy!!!! Watch out as the shoreline is now a riprapped BUT it under water right now. The dock is not in either…..

No open water for awhile! Drove by last night and they are still ice fishing and walking around the lock wall towards the dam……

14.4 total
6.8 big fish

green yellow and red

x100 Joe Buck is the worst announcer ever!!!!!!!! sorry couldn’t resist…

x4

Thanks Everyone!!!! To clarify the right side of the rack has 6 points so if the left side matched it would be a 12 pointer. Now this is a nice buck but not a giant. If I shot and recovered this deer I wouldn’t have done a head mount but probabily a euro skull mount.

This whole situation has added a couple more grey hairs to my head and beard. For those that asked I did tell my daughter and her response was “no way”,if he’s going to be that way tell him tell him that “we want our deer back.” So im thinking that she it attached to it. I’m still torn on the decision and it looks like the responses have been about 50/50, so here is option #4.

The other “hunter” has not seen the rack or any pictures of it. Just like I have not seen any pictures of the left side. I have a friend in the taxidermy business and he has hundreds maybe thousands of sheds that we could “doctor” up to give him a horn that I could pass off as being the right side of “his deer”. I really don’t like this idea as I feel as I would be stooping to his level or maybe lower. BUT I really I don’t want to give up our souvenier of our 2013 season either. If i had been by myself or I was just going to let it sit in a pile in the garage no problem, id give it up if he asked nicely. Something Like “hey if your not going to do anything special with that horn would you mind if I took it as i’d like to go a head mount.”

I want to use this experience as a valuable life lesson for my daughter. Yes its only a deer horn and hopefully there will be many more deer, memories and stories between us. I’ve hunted with the same family group for 30 years so this is one of those stories that we will talk about 20 years from now. But none of us know how may more season we will be around. I want to be and should be kind and give it back to him and “kill him with kindness” On the other hand I don’t want to teach my daughter to roll over to every bully and to stand up for what s right also.

Decisions decisions…..

Total 14.34
Big Walleye 7.98

I’ll be there rain or shine!!!!

For the price I have been more than happy with my Cabelas Depthmaster trolling rods. I have 10 of them from the 5 foot shorty up to there 8.5 footer. I have them paired with Daiwa sealines and accudepths for long line trolling and lead line trolling. Right now they are onsale for 19.99 on the Cabelas website.

Maybe 40 boats in the tournament and pool 4 is 30 miles long, I think there’s plenty of room for everyone!!!!!!

I went by coville yesterday and it wont be long. The landing area is open and there is still some “shore ice” along the river side of the channel. With the sunshine hitting that side and the river rising. I’ll bet it will be open this weekend.

The river is wide open from Camp LaCoupoulis to Fountain City and probability further. The lake is losing ice daily but It will be a while for ice out unless we get a barge coming thru to open it up. Once that first barge goes thru it will be wide open in a few days
As far as the Eagles go the are here by the hundreds.

Stop and see Mike at River Valley Outdoors in Wabasha. There are way to many places with a few miles of town to mention in a online post. As far as the ice there is 18 inches of ice covered by at least 12 inches of wet sloppy snow/slush! Good luck if you decide to go out.

The reason that it was updated and the fee went away was because the MN DNR bought it and they now own and maintain it as a public access.

There is something that won’t allow all computers to connect. My kids have two identical laptops and one allows me to get onto the site and the other one tells me that there are connection issues. Last night I tested them side by side and one worked and one didn’t. Any ideas why??

Is the city landing open or did you have to use Belvadere?

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Hook bonnets work wonders for storage in plano boxes. Cabelas sells them.

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+2

Drew I had the same results as you today! I spent six hours on the lake moving around punching lots of holes ,thinking that I could find them and didn’t catch a single fish! Did have a few lookers on the flasher but very few compared to the past years. I wont drive on the ice so it was good workout walking all over h#l!, dragging the shack and hand drilling thru 20 inches of ice. Burned off enough calories so I can pig out during the game today!

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check out history channels “Men Who Built America”. Very good show.

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+1

x2

Did anyone look at the youth license prices? If i remember from earlier this year, they went down?? Youth turkey tags and youth deer tags for $5.00??

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That is a awesome feeling for the moment. But I will have to say that watching my children grow up and seeing that the times I had to be the mean guy and not there best bud pay off. It’s that moment when your proud of them for what they have become.

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Agreed, this is probably the BEST feeling you can have.

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x3!!!!

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As much as I want one I am not going to pay $100 for an ice reel.

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I understand what you are saying. Apparently some people don’t think $99 is out of line because people are buying them on ebay for up to $185 each.

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Another classic example of a item that catches more fisherman than fish!

I will from now on as I had one wrap around my transducer cable and cut it this afternoon! Live and learn!!

Roger, GREAT READ!! I am 30 years younger but i agree with your thoughts and observations. I often wonder how we ever caught fish 40 years ago. I grew up fishing with a mitchell 300 reel and a heavy abu garcia fiberglass rod that dad bought me when i was 5 years old. In its day that was a expensive top of the line combo! I still have that combo, Its mounted in my basement as a reminder of the good times fishing with my fishing mentor or dad as i still call him.

I know i must be getting old as I keep looking at all of the new, improved products and think to myself that these products are all designed to catch fisherman instead of fish! Not that i’m against progress but do you really need a $1200.00 Marcum flasher/camera for ice fishing? Do you really need 20 colors of shap raps and using fishermans logic you have to at least two of each color in case you loose one!

Again thanks to Roger for taking me back to the good old days, now i’m going to call my fishing mentor, and then hit the ice!!

I think you made the right choice!! I was in the same situation a year ago and did a ton of research online and surfing many online forums. Everytime someone asks a question like this it turns into a p@8ss%ng match. What I did was to decide on what “level/budget” unit that I wanted based on where and the type of fishing that I do. My three choices were the hummingbird ice-35, vexilar vx1p, vexilar fl-8. I created a spread sheet that compares eac unit on a level playing field. I had 10 different comparisions such as price, warranty, target seperation, zoom, was a case included, battery type, etc. After you compared them side by side on paper the choise was obvious. Had my marcum vx 1p for a year now and I’m very happy with my decision.

PS Ford makes a better truck then Chevy, Dodge, and Toyota!!

total 14.5

big walleye 6.3

big sauger 3.3