Pool 3 Personal Bests ~ Flatheads

Fathers Day I found myself getting a kiss from my favorite daughter as I was heading out the door to meet Sportsman’s Warehouse Fishing Dept Manager Darren Dole and his right hand man, Ryan Lindus for a relaxing evening on the water.

Darren is from Idaho and is working at the new Woodbury location. Although he hasn’t fish in MN much, I was impressed with his knowledge of techniques in fishing our waters. Ryan is originally from Grantsburg WI and has been a resident of Hudson WI for 5 years now.

Our first stop on our outing was a location with moderate currant and speckled with wood sticking up throughout the area. So far this year it’s only produced two little cats for me, but the area looks so good we just had to stop and plop a bullhead down. We used my standard flathead rigging of a 10/0 Gamakatsu hook, 6 inches of 80 pound test Power Pro, a 110 pound test swivel, a four ounce No-Roll sinker all connected to the Garcia 7000C3 with more 80 pound Power Pro, we set out four rods and kicked back to relax and enjoy the beautiful Mississippi River.

Just as dusk came and I was ready to move to a more consistent location…my favorite custom St Croix Rod made a goofy dip towards the water. It kinda looked like an over achieving bullhead…but I didn’t want to take any chances. Darren set the hook on his first and personal best walleye. A healthy 26 incher!

Since I leave walleye guiding to Dustin Stewart…I figured it was time to move on. We anchored up just out of the main channel current into a funnel area…plopped 3 bullheads into the water and relaxed just for a few minutes until the deep water rod started making the clicking sound of a flat on a slow run. Ryan was up next and as he was swinging and missing the shallow water rod busted out in the “clicker song”! Darren set the hook like he’s been cat fishing all his life and the fight was on! I kept asking him who was in control, the cat or him…he just grunted as the cat dove down deeper and tried getting into the wood cover. Although I would say the cat was in more control, Darren did a great job of keeping the rod tip high and the fish out of the snag….even with the cinched down drag slipping line out! While Ryan and I played a hand of Texas Hold’em…we would occasionally ask Darren if he gained control yet… long card game!

Here’s Darren with his first Flathead ever! 28 lbs of ear to ear grinning!

That seemed to be it for this spot…so off to the infamous Cottonwood Tree area. After anchoring we watched a good size flathead working the shallow water. His back and tail would come out of the water at times. We could see the minnows jumping out of it’s way! Kinda neat!

Not long before we had a “chomp” and Ryan was working on another good fish. Turned out to be another personal best at 27+ pounds….along with another ear to ear grin.

I should mention that Darren landed “a little guy” about 10 lbs. When I asked him if he wanted his picture taken with it, his reply was…”no, not with a dink”. I reminded him that the “dink” was 10 lbs. It’s funny how perspectives change once a person hooks into a larger fish!

A quick photo and all fish were released to be enjoyed again.

Thanks Darren and Ryan for making this trip truly pleasurable!