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I haven’t been as far north as the chair yet so I have no idea what condition leech has left in in!  I think he should take it home and restore it.   Big Rice has was a b*ch to paddle.  I didn’t miss it this weekend and won’t miss it any other weekend I don’t make it there.

IKR!   I’m hopefully gonna be in Ely in a couple weeks but I’ll be chasing ducks more than grouse.  Not the best place to go for ducks but I love it up there in October.

Still biting lindy rigs. Had to get some fish before I head out to chase birds 

roughfish!!!!!!!!!!👍🤣🤣   dandy fish sir!!!!!!!!!!!👍

Put a few on the metal meat leash today 

As long as the birds don’t fly I am good. I can catch fish through the ice fairly well. 

My cousin and I just returned from beautiful Lake Vermilion after 4.5 days of the most spectacular walleye fishing you could ever hope for. Usually our mutual friend joins us but his father passed away and he had to opt out. We arrived late Saturday afternoon and packed things up after our morning outing Wednesday. We stopped at Cabelas on the way up and found them to be sold out of pike suckers. While they had them, they were charging 99 cents each! We then stopped at Harris bait shop and found a help yourself situation that was also out of pike suckers. They sold them while available for 6 for $6! We eventually found them locally for the same price as last year. During our stay, we used pike suckers, rainbow mix, and crawlers. The walleyes hit them all but, I believe, the rainbow mix caught the most, the crawlers were almost as productive, and the pike suckers produced the biggest fish.  We caught them in depths ranging from 13' to 27'. They were in the rocks and in the mud depending on the time of day. We caught walleyes all day every day with 5 o'clock PM to ~7 o'clock PM being optimum for quantity. The weather was absolutely HORRIBLE with high winds and non-stop rain early in the trip. Boat control was very difficult and I struggled to keep our speed around that .4mph to .6mph. Hits were fast and furious but the hit to catch ratio was at best 5 or more hits to one catch . We stuck with the 1oz bottom bouncers, 3 red beads, and a size 2 hook for the big suckers. I found a shorter 3' leader to be most effective. We caught 153 walleyes on our trip and I would bet we had at least 5 times that many hits!. Now, with all that said, we don't feed line to walleyes to help avoid gut hooks and that certainly gives rise to a poor hook-up ratio. We ate fish twice and brought home our limits. Everything else went back. The walleyes ranged in size from ~13" to 26". We caught lots of slot fish and fair numbers of 15"-19" fish. In addition, we caught 10 smallmouth and only one jumbo. Our really big fish were never landed. My cousin had a true giant walleye laying on top of the water right beside the boat and grabbed her by the base of the tail in an attempt to scoop her into the boat. She was having none of that and with a major flop, snapped the leader. We didn't use a net because I forgot it at the dock. Getting old is a bitch. I had two different walleyes(I'm sure) hooked on Tuesday that came off directly below the boat. Both fish I thought were snags when they hit. Anyone who thinks walleyes don't fight have never caught a truly big one. Both fish ran off several yards of line while fighting to get free. Eventually they both succeeded. I would hesitate to say how big I think my cousins fish was that he had beside the boat, but, my wife and I have caught some really big walleyes in Lake Vermilion and I know what a big walleye looks like. That walleye was absolutely enormous.  We've decided to bring my cousin's two sons back up for a short trip a little later on. Hopefully, the walleyes will still be in a feeding frenzy. Lastly, I usually like to include pictures with my posts. I have a big problem this time, I got a new phone and I know nothing about transferring the pictures. That will be remedied when we come back up. In the meantime....... Good Fishing, MarkB🙂

I don't think Moose needs my help, he seems to do pretty well with the ice fishing and grouse hunting by the pictures! 👌

looks to me like your gonna need to be on the ice ALOT to get them all checked out!!!!!!!👍🙄 mayhaps Leech could help ya out!!!!   at least he wouldnt be "accidently" locking any more threads!!!!!!🤗🤣🥴

I got some cool jigs this year this a picture from Slab Bait Shop. The 2nd to last photo is one of my jig boxes with them in it. The last photo has some Macula jigs and if your eyes are getting old these are awesome to tie!! I won the auction for the last photo so I got all of the plastics and jigs.