Aitkin County, Mn, Panfish

After weeks off the lake I was finally able to get back in the boat with a little twist. (more on that later) I had my boat borrowed to my Cousin Mike who was on a working vacation up at his cabin. I say working vacation because when he was taking a break from his work on the cabin he did get out and locate some real nice gills with the help of his boys.

I heard all about the great bite from the boys as soon as I arrived. They where fired up Friday night for a trip out planned for Saturday morning. We are set to go providing it didn’t rain to hard we told them. (yeah, that would have stopped them) It was a treat to just jump in the truck, get a ride to the landing and do nothing at the boat launch. Sit in the front seat of the boat and wait for the go to drop a line.

Once we anchored on the spot (Derek took care of that) I had to rig my own line (can you believe that) and it did take me a bit. My fat fingers dont work real well with those small mini merts by BfishN Tackle. I think they had about a dozen in the well before I even got my line in the water. We fished the edge of a weedline on a break from 8ft to 15 ft with waxies and it was a blast. I almost forgot how fun it is to pull these aggresive swimming fish in on light tackle. The cool thing about this trip was I did nothing but rig my line and I did even manage to put a couple in the livewell before the kids reached our quoto of fish on their own. We did keep 50 for a fish fry that night and Mike wanted to treat his parents to a fresh panfish meal when they got home. I have one last photo to share. Here is Brandon cleaning his first fish and I couldn’t believe the job he did. Maybe next time I won’t have to help with the fish cleaning either.