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Rainy River Fishing Report


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Got home last night from rainy, and it was incredable. Best walleye fishing I have ever had. We had 5 guys in our group and we stayed at dougs place. We fished all day monday and all day tuesday and boated over 200 walleye between the 5 of us. I think the key too our success was having BIG minnows. We picked up our bait in blackduck and they nice rainbows. Talked too some guys who picked up bait in town and they had small rainbows and fatheads, and were not doing as well. We fished from the blue silo on the canadian side all the way down past the dutchmen and caught fish everywhere inbetween. A rainy chip really helped us key in on the main channel holes, and they were the most productive but we also caught fish as shallow as 8 feet of water. Don't fish by the crowds is seems that the bite was a liitle slower where all the boats were packed in. We used differn't tactics, mainly slip driffting, pitching,dragging. 30" was our biggest but proably had 50 fish over 25". Alot of fun thanks too doug and carl for keeping us informed on river conditions, you can guarantee we will be back next year!!!

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Eyes 54,

I am heading up tonight, thanks for the info. Did any certain color or jig seem to work better? Also were you using 3/8 to 1/2 ounce jigs, or will the river allow lighter ones to be used?

Thanks,

Ripper!! grin

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Anyone else find it phyically painful to read these reports knowing you are unable to participate? crycry

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Well..... Y E S Too bad I have to work, who wants to catch 50 over 25" anyway? Carpal tunnel comes to mind - too painful to reel them all in?

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Yep sure wanted to get back up there and was gonna next tues and wednesday but just found out we're heading back to work on wednesday so that plan got axed. Making me sick as we were there a week to early before the fish got going and now I can't get back up. Oh well try again next year.

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Funny thing is, I am packed and ready to drive up tomorrow for the weekend, and all my 7 year old can talk about is (hopefully) catching his first sturgeon, LOL!

I'm going to let him jig/minnow, while my line will be a gob of crawlers on a circle hook jig til I can get a sturgie to bite. Can't wait to see the smile on his face.

He even asked if we could mount a sturgie on the wall!

I said all sturgies go back in the water, but a nice eye just might result in a replica on the wall for Xmas!!!!!

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I know that I cant wait ot get out there in a boat and catch a few eyes tomorrow. I can Imagine that it will be a zoo at Birchdale tomorrow!

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Its been a few years sice I've been up there on a busy day but I seem to remember us having to park a long ways away. Maybe someone knows but I think there is still only one launch ramp there. They could use about 4 on a busy saturday in the fall along with a giant parking lot.

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It will probably be a ghost town up there this weekend huh? laughgrin

Yep, if you are the Ghost Whisperer grin!

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Hey this may be a dumb question but someone above mentioned replica mounts. What does a guy have to do to get one of those??Obviously a good taxidermist but what about measurements, pictures etc? I've been thinking about that recently and if I caught a big guy I wouldnt even know what to do with it so I could have a replica made. Im heading up tonight to fish all day tomorrow and cant wait!!! grin

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Not a dumb question dragfoot. You're on the right track already. Measure length and circumference, and take several pictures of the fish that clearly show it's coloration. That's all you need....good luck!

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Remember the entire river is open so there are a number of places you can put in. It is going to be a zoo up there this weekend, but having all the accesses open should serve to spread out the crowd.

There's an access at Birchdale about 25 minutes east of Baudette. Another called Frontier, about 15-20 minutes east of Baudette. Vidas is a popular ramp just east of Clementson - probably 10 minutes east of Baudette. There is also another nice ramp out at Wheelers point, west of Baudette and near the mouth at Lake of the Woods. I have heard there is another ramp near or in the city of Baudette too, but I have never used it.

Upstream from Birchdale, there is a ramp at Franze Jevne State Park, another at Pelland closer to International Falls, and another in the city of I. Falls.

Good luck and have fun!

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Heading up stupid early in the morning. Any idea how small of jig i can get away with?

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Recently returned from "round 2" up on the Rainy. I fished Tuesday and Wednesday with a my new friend Bill. Tuesday we boated 78 fish, and Wednesday we boated 106. The numbers were not so remarkable as the average size of the fish. In the past ten years or so, I have maybe seen one other time when the percentage of big fish you caught was so large.

We took pictures of the first few big ones, but you know you are into some good fishing when you don't bother to photograph fish that are 28 inches long, but instead, pop them off with a plyers beside the boat in order to get back and get another one sooner than later! We continued to search for that giant, and managed to catch a couple that were just a hair short of 30 inches. One particular piggie weighed just about 11 pounds on the Boga.

Here's me with a nice 28.

TB10H285.jpg

And Bill with another 28.

[img:center]http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn246/bigfishhunter65/BT10H281F.jpg[/img

Good luck, and have fun up there.

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Hey Tim is Bill the red lund and tiller Honda man? I think I recognize him from when he used to come fish the St. Louis River a lot. I think I saw him on the river yesterday but he was alone.

I just got back and got a real nice 31"er and Mike and I got a bunch of other nice fish. Im guessing we were in the 70 plus fish range. Those fish are as pretty as they come. I love the milky white bellies, see through fins and huge shoulders they all seem to carry now.

By the way did you stop last night and have a meal at the Ranch house? If so isnt that waitress a trip? We were in the back rt. corner. I was the big ugly guy with the black Lamiglass hat on.

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fished with northlander on thursay...lots of nice fish in the boat. i fished this morning till 12:30. only boated about 10 with one 28in that was just under 9lbs. the river was packed by about 10am. birchdale parking lot was over flowing onto the road at 12:30 when i got off the river and boat where still making there way in. the river is going to be a zoo this weekend...i bet all the landings will be stuffed to the gills. this was my first trip to the river....it definitely wont be the last.

P4070145.jpg

31in

P4070148.jpg

28.5in

P4070147.jpg

27.5in

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You guys are killing me!!! If my wife weren't about to give birth I would be up there in a heartbeat. Now that I think about it, do you guys think she would mind if I missed my child's birth? Shoot, it might just be worth it!! laugh

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Sounds like the time I went duck hunting the first month of my sons life... they both still like me.. go fishing!

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Technically 12am is actually the 15th. You can fish all day on the 14th of April, then that is it until the 15th of may.

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Pumped, I'm headin up at 0300 right after work tonight. Hopefully they will still be going. All these posts have got me worked into a frenzy. Thanks for all the reports the last two weeks.

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Hey Tim, as you said, this is a truly remarkable year for the numbers of big fish. My first river trip was in 1980 (yeah, I'm an old guy), and I've never seen a season where the big fish bite just kept on happening.....hot bites, sure, but not where it just keeps on. Truly a season to remember. Gotta love it when the river clears up and stays stable so early.

You two guys sure look familiar, especially if you were in a Lund/Honda as Northlander asked. If so, I was in the OD Lund and small white Johnson fishing near you guys for a while on Tuesday.

Good luck

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My fishing buddy Matt and I were up for the day on Saturday, the wind was killer but workable. We put in at Vidas and man was it full, but we launched and loaded at the end of the day pretty quickly, thanks to guys who knew what they were doing and kept it moving, nice to see.

We fished just east of Vidas for a while, caught a few decent ones, then went further east to the Church. Only caught one small one there and decided to go back to where we started. We spent most of our time fishing from just west of an older "sea wall" on the Canadian side of the river, there is also a light lime green house in the area and a Canadian flag flying to further up river about up to a large home on the American side right before the river takes a turn. (we stayed on the American side, and actually quite close to it, best fishing for us was in 16-18ft and just outside of a mudline running along the American shore). The wind was brutal most of the day, and we spent all day drifting up river and controlling that with the electic bowmount, it actually worked pretty well.

We fished with 3/8oz Phelps standup jigs all day, glow green caught the most and chartreuse caught almost as many and all the biggest ones. We brought up some rainbows from Bluewater in Bemidji, and had some real Chubzilla's in the batch. All the biggest fish came on monster rainbows, the biggest we had and they were huge. We ended up only catching 15 fish in 8hrs, but would have only had 4 keepers and 11 over the size limit, with the biggest 5 being 27.5, 28.5, 29 and two 29.5's. I caught the 4 largest, and caught a 29 and 29.5 on the same drift later in the day, don't believe I'll have a day like that again, unless its up there! Heres a few pics, hope all the lucky people that can be up there today and into the week before it closes do great and that the info here helps. I won't be back, so happy to share!!

27.5 for Matt

DSCN0185-1.jpg

29.5 #1 for me

IMG_0161-1.jpg

29.5 #2 for me

IMG_0174-2.jpg

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Just got back. Fished all day Saturday and just the morning of today. Did really well Saturday morning but after that it slowed down.

32 with a 18.5 inch girth. Picture doesn't do the justice. Plus doesn't help the way I was holding it.

DSCN0547.jpg

27

DSCN0550.jpg

27

DSCN0554.jpg

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