112307 report. Where there's a will..............

[Mykal]

"There is a way". I had the pleasure of fishing with George (Gman) last night. What made it extra special was taking a break from Captain and also riding in my previous boat. He has taken great care of it and has added some nice upgrades. More importantly, we probably would not have been able to access the lake last night in my new boat. We opted to go out of the SW with a SW wind to avoid potential dangers of wind blow shore ice. We arrived at Eddies around 5pm and were stunned to find the access locked in ice. We hit it with an ice chisel and it was a solid 1-2 inches thick. Got a call from Dhenry who called Terry's and they were socked in as well. According to the Eddies security guard everything he knew on the West side was frozen in, except Garrison Public. We wanted to fish IP so what do we do? I spot Eddies beach and low and behold that whole area and South is wide open! We asked the security guard and he said if you can get out go ahead. I put on the rubber boots and in my excitement rushed in to push George off the trailer....realizing afterwards that I already had my bibs on and one of the boots were folded down. I easily slid the Lund 16 footer off the Shorelander roller into 15 inches of water, then walked back to shore to drain the water out of the boot and shake out my bibs. Thanks to extra socks we were off. We navigated slowly out of the beach and headed out to IP. Water temps were 34.5 near shore and ranged from 35-36 main lake. We hit IP with a moderate SW wind that tapperd to a mild one after an hour. The moon popped in and out from hazy snow clouds and we were greeting with stunning moonlight in between brief light snow showers. Air temps in the upper 20's ...it was simply BEAUTIFUL. We saw one other boat on IP for a brief moment and then it was gone before we arrived. George, as a night trolling rookie, got a great night to hone in his skills and after an hour or so he was starting to put it together. Into the wind at .8 mph....finally I felt the familiar "pop" I have become addicted to as my 14 HJ FT found it's first victim. She was the fattest fish I have seen this fall and measured 27 inches. She looked like she swallowed a football. A mere 10 minutes later on the exact same hump I smacked another 26" beauty. We trolled up and down for another hour with not a bite. What was really strange was the lack of baitfish, and even more puzzling, no signs of Tulibee. None! Over the next 3 hours we shot over to Vineland, Shabosh, and Rocky Reef with the same results. The screens were clear of baitfish and fish. We put an assortment of baits on from SSR’s to Rouge’s . X-raps HJ’s and ran from .5 to 1.0 with notta, so we called it an early night…fishing wasn't great but what an awesome night it was being out on the water. When we left ice was forming in the bays out to 30 feet or more in some spots.

I am still perplexed at the lack of baitfish or Tulibee. It was like a ghost town down there from 4 to 10 feet. This is my 7th year of night trolling and I can’t ever remember the West and Northwest areas being so off. I can only assume the fish are out of the shallows and moving toward the deeper breaklines, which we did not pursue. We did run IP off the edges and it was void of life out to 17 feet.

On to the hardwater season.

[Dhenry]

Sounds like we may be done for the year! Has anyone launched out of the Garrison public ramp lately. I saw Paul's report about the wind up at Garrison. I thought that ramp would be protected with the wind coming from the southwest. Can I get a Ranger in and our of there?

[mtreno]

we put in up in garrison. best access we could find other then water depth. two other trailers in the lot and another put in right brfore us. broke ice at liberty beach the night before.

[Dhenry]

Did you put in last night? What type of boat do you have? How deep is it getting in and out?

[G_man]

How'd you do out there mtreno?

[mtreno]

ya last night in garrison. deep v skeeter - did a little rubbin but not to bad - i could not put in there into the wind but calm days are ok..... oh ya and rubber boots are a good idea for whoever you are picking up on shore. i would guess your ranger runs about the same depth as me.

we did not do well (muskie) but did see another boat get a nice one. not sure about the eyes but seemed to see more action on the graph out off the break 17-19 ft.

[PieEyed]

Nice report Mykal! Mine will be quite similar to yours. We went out of the Garrison access though. What a beautiful night to be out like you said. There was just a light breeze and it was relatively warm. We had about the same luck as you did. Fished for a while then we popped two about 5 min apart. Very large fat fish. It’s kind of a long story but we had to barrow my brothers boat for the evening. So after we caught those two I realized the batteries had died on the trolling motor. Nothing frustrates me more than not being prepared. Oh well, at least we were out. We tried a few passes with the big motor with nothing so we headed out to the rocks. We didn’t catch any fish but I’ve never read so many fish on the graph. They appeared to be tulibee. They were in mostly 4’-12’fow.

Dhenry I called you a few times this weekend, we must have been playing phone tag. I thought the Garrison access was fine as long as you watch out for the blowouts from everyone power loading their boats. I take it you didn’t get out Saturday? As Mykal said the ice was forming on our last pass of the night. We were trolling along just fine and then our lures came to the surface and started to drag on top of the skim ice. We decided that was it, we pushed it to about the end.

As of last night my ice fishing equipment is ready to go. See you guys on the hard water!

[Mykal]

PieEyed, where did you see Tulibee?? Garrison Reef, Myr Mar, or the Rocky Shoreline along Pike's. We didn't see any.

[Team Otter]

Good reports guys. I guess I don't feel too bad about missing out on a great bite but I do miss "the experience" from time to time.

[skies_and_eyes]

I was out sunday on the south side of Garrison reef and we marked no biat fish at all from 4.5-10 ft or water

[GoggleEye]

All you guys talking about breaking open ice to get out are killing me!! Here I am waiting everyday for the ice to form and you guys are breaking it open!! Ha, just kidding boys. Can't wait to get up to the pond. Fished a small lake in Wisconsin the other day and got some nice gills and crappies. 2.5 inches of solid ice was enough for me. Ice season is here!! Amen.

GoggleEye

[PieEyed]

I was on the North and East side of Garrison reef and there were large bait fish on the locator virtually everywhere I went. That's the first sign of life I've seen out there this fall. I know others have caught fish out there this year but I haven't. I was hoping for one last over 28" to end the season. Oh well, good thing there's ice fishing! If this year is anything like the last I hope to have 6 over 28" be the end of Dec. Good luck everybody.