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Your Responses - Share & Have Fun :)
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By JerkinLips · Posted
41.6°F in Stuntz Bay Thursday morning. Left my boat in the water to hopefully fish more before the lake freezes. Caught four 9-11" walleyes in 2½ hours before I gave up due to the strong west wind. Water level has not gone up more than a couple of inches at the most. May be a good winter to jack my boathouse out of the water on the deep end. -
By Troy Smutka · Posted
The calendar migrators from the Dakotas have been passing through central MN in trickles the past few weeks, and the recent cooler weather has some Canada ducks starting to show up. We have been harvesting mallards, pintails, gadwalls, wigeon, shovelers, greenwing teal, canvasbacks, redheads, bluebills, and ringnecks in decent numbers. -
By SkunkedAgain · Posted
It doesn't look like the lake level has gone up at all. I was up a week ago and struggled to get my boat in and out of the public landing on the west end of Head O Lakes. I used my paddle to push the boat further out to deeper water. I could hear the hull moving over the sandy/muddy bottom near the launch. -
By JerkinLips · Posted
Pretty tough. Was catching about 2 walleyes per hour and the biggest was only 13". Back up Thursday so I hope I have better success. -
By smurfy · Posted
the kid and I always check our stands prior.......i'll go back to check the conditions of said stands before he gets there to see what we need. while i'm at it if i can i shoot at grouse with shells that appear to not have bb,s in them!!!!🙄 -
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By LakeofthewoodsMN · Posted
On the South Shore... With unseasonably warm weather, there are still some anglers hitting the water and most have been rewarded. Limits of walleyes and saugers being caught, and the forecast looking ahead is favorable. The best bite on the south end of LOW has been in 22-28 feet of water. Water temperatures are dropping and as the temps cool further, the bite has been excellent. Vertical jigging with frozen emerald shiners has been the program for most anglers. Bring plenty of bait, as you’ll need to sort through some smaller fish and short biters. Plenty of eater fish to be had, just have to do a bit of sorting. Anglers are also reporting very good numbers of jumbo perch and occasional pike mixed in with the walleyes. For those fishing structure, if you slide up on top of a rock pile, don't be surprised to catch a big smallmouth bass, there are plenty around. This week’s hot colors have been gold, gold/glow white, gold/chartreuse, gold/orange, and gold/glow white/pink. One tip, a stinger hook on your jig will catch you more fish if you start missing too many fish. On the Rainy River... Bait dealers are reporting good numbers of shiners in the river this past week. Interesting, each night is different. Some areas have the small shiners called pinheads. Other areas have the larger minnows. The river is producing some nice walleyes in various spots from Four Mile Bay to Wheeler's Point, to Baudette all the way to Birchdale. There are 42 miles of navigable Rainy River from the mouth to Birchdale with plenty of public boat ramps along the way. Walleyes are being caught in various depths, but 15-25 feet of water has been good. Jigging with live or frozen emerald shiners has been highly effective. Some anglers are also trolling crankbaits to cover more ground and find fish. Both methods are producing solid results. Sturgeon fishing has been strong. The catch-and-release sturgeon fishing is open into the spring when it changes to the "keep season" on April 24th. Up at the NW Angle... Fall fishing continues to be excellent. Points, neck-down areas with current, shoreline breaks, and transition zones from rock to mud are all productive locations for walleye right now. It is traditionally a mixed bag up around the many islands in this part of the lake and this fall is no different. In addition to walleyes, pike, jumbo perch, and crappies are in the mix. A jig and minnow has been the most effective presentation. Good muskie fishing is the norm during the fall of the year and area reports have been good. In addition to casting, trolling shorelines, points and neckdown areas has been effective. Muskies are often targeting schooling tullibees this time of year. The weather forecast for the next couple of weeks is conducive for fall fishing. If you don't deer hunt, or if you have harvested your deer, consider some bonus walleye action before the ice forms. The bite continues to be excellent. -
By leech~~ · Posted
Yeah, like I said goodthing. 👍👍 -
By gimruis · Posted
I'm not one to leave that to chance the day I need it. I always check on my stands prior to the season. Just like I always shoot my rifle before the season and I always run my outboard motor before fishing opener. Too many things to go wrong without confirming it ahead of time. I guess it could have been beavers but the house itself didn't appear nearly big enough along one ditch. It was about the size of chair. I've seen beavers houses many times before and they appear much bigger than that. -
By leech~~ · Posted
Good thing you made a check run. That would have really suked walking into opening day. Why do you think muskrats and not beavers? -
By gimruis · Posted
Well I checked on stands over the weekend. Kind of a disaster. All the ditches are plum full and twice as wide becauase muskrats have clogged an area. I spent an hour unclogging it and the water is slowly moving again, but our bridges and planks were underwater. The back portion of the land where the best stand is was inaccessible. Hopefully that changes by Saturday. I have a feeling the muskrats are just going to clog it back up again. Tons of standing corn still too. They've started on it, but being so wet now with more rain coming, whatever's there will remain there for the foreseeable future. All the grassland is completely flattened like a pancake due to 3-4 inches of heavy wet snow. That eliminates about 75% of the pheasant habitat in this spot. Total buzz kill. And this specific spot was one of my better producers last season because the grass was intact and lush through December last year.
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Question
kstruck
Well I finally splurged and bought a new fish finder. Having just purchased my fist boat last fall I am still working at making it a complete fishing boat.
Got a big pay check and my plan was to head to Cabela's and tinker with different units. I was looking for something mid-priced that I could use as my main finder until I could purchase a better unit and use move this one to the front of the boat.
The first guy to help me at Cabela's was really directing me towards the Humminbird SI units, warning me of the Lowrance customer service and other issues. But with several models from both companies out of stock, I took the last HDS 7. I probably would have waited longer to purchase if I didn't have an imminent trip to the northwoods where I would be fishing unfamiliar lakes.
I also purchased the 09 Navionics chip.
Bringing the unit home I was anxious to get it turned on and play with it some more. This is when I realized it wouldn't read the navionics card, it said I needed to update the software. So this included running to best buy the next day to purchase a fresh SD card. Well I did that and loaded the software and it was pretty simple, I don't have too much computer knowledge, but for someone who is unfamiliar with this stuff I can see how it would be a headache.
Set up was really quite easy, I am not a mechanical person and with a little help from a friend I had it mounted and ready to go.
Once I got on the water I had to tinker with the sonar a little bit to get it working properly, I still don't see the fish echoes real well, but I know that has been discussed on here before and I have to go and re-read some of that discussion. But I did get it usable.
Of my first three jaunts last week, twice the GPS had trouble locking in location. This was even when the unit was had a strong signal from the max number of satellites. The location of the mapping was off on one lake, and I think that was more or less because the gps was having trouble. After rejuicing the battery it seemed to work fine again, I wonder if that wasn't part of the problem. My prop did not appreciate not having a gps signal on a rocky north eastern lake in darkness.
One issue I have when I use the Navionics mapping is that hundreds of boxes appear across mainly MN, it doesn't affect anything, but these boxes remain whether zoomed in or zoomed out. Just kind of annoying when you are fishing a mud flat on mille lacs and there is a line across your screen.
I did take advantage of the quiet wind and drove up to Mille Lacs last night and I am still trying to pinpoint the optimum sensitivity level, anyone with this unit have a special number? Again this might have been discussed and I will look back at the archives. It was just kind of frustrating wondering whether I was looking at fish or particle interference.
I really do enjoy this unit and would recommend it. I'll have to think hard about adding the SI feature when it becomes available, the cabela's guy said it would be about $450, and I don't know if that is really worth it. It took me about an hour on the water to learn all the nuances of the unit and now I can't imagine myself without it. And once I really pinpoint the sonar it will be the perfect tool.
So that is my two cents on my new toy.
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