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Guide Question (headed up late Aug)


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So me and some buddies have an annual trip up to Vermillion the end of Aug (24-28). Our main goal is Walleyes. Last year, we did not have much sucess. We will be staying on the East side (plotnic point near shamrocks).

I see that many of the Vermillion guides offer a boat follow fee. How does this work? $50-100 for 4-8 hours, I am assuming we meet him where he is at, and then just follow? Do they advise tactics still? Anyone done this with sucess? I just dont want to get Skunked like last year. Im not sure the others im with would have the funds to do a full blown guide trip for a day, thats why I am just looking at following (plus we have our own boat & gear)

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My group of guys are doing what you are suggesting. We have six in our group and three will be going with the guide and myself and two others in the follow boat. Our guide will provide his boat with bait, but the follow boat needs to provide their own. Not a big deal to us. We are going up middle of September.

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Cool. thanks. I guess my question as well is, do you also have to have the boat/guide booked for the day to book the follow boat? My assumption is yes? There will be 3 of us, but we are not looking to hire the guide and his boat/tackle for the day, just $50-100 (plus tip) to follow. Didnt know if that was an option.

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I can't say that I have asked a guide if I could follow them around but I would assume you need to hire the guide and have people in the guide boat as well. But if hiring a guide is out of the question, and it is for me too, just read a bunch of the posts from the many guides in this forum. I am not ashamed to say I am a pretty poor walleye fisherman but after reading a few posts and asking a question or two I have done very well the last couple of times up this season. The guides who offer up their advice do so fairly frequently and very detailed.

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Neptune is correct.

Most guides require that part of a group hire them and then the follow boats from your group also pay a fee.

The general follow boat fee is:

$50 1/2 day

$75 6hr day

$100 full day

Information is always free! Just do not expect to get GPS references!

Cliff

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I can't wait to get there and by the way Cliff is our guide for a half day trip. Some of our fishing party wasn't so sure that they wanted to spend the money, but I convinced them for a small price for each of us to pay it is well worth every penny and then some. Our fishing time is limited so why not make the best use of the time we have by having an experienced guide show us around. Looking forward to meeting you Cliff on the morning of September 13th.

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Chester,

See you in Sept!

The walleyes are still biting well!

We fished 4 hrs this morning in heavy seas and boated 14 fish. Kept 5 nice ones and released 3 slot fish between 21" and 25".

Cliff

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A guy I work with son was up a few weeks ago and he paid for a guide for his son's group. They came up with a larger group and they were the only ones to catch any fish the whole time they were up. Guides are well worth the price if you can afford it.

Kind of funny the guy was talking about it in the cafeteria and he couldn't remember the guides name but he had said the lake was up by Ely. I asked him the name of the lake and when he said Vermilion I said know a guy up there, was his name Cliff. He said yes that was it. I guess you had to be there but it made me laugh.

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Well we bit the bullet and lined up a guide for our first morning up there. I'll report back how we do!

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  • 4 weeks later...

Just got back tonight after 5 wonder days. We couldn't have asked for better weather. The guide we hired was Joe Panichi and I would highly recommend. We had 3 in the boat including my buddys girlfriend and Joe did awesome helping her where needed. We ended up with 8 walleyes, a pike, 2 smallies and 6-7 perch, 4 of which were big keepers, all in 4 hours. He fileted everything quick too when we got back.

Lead core was the ticket the whole time. I had just picked up 2 setups so with the confidence and tips from the guide we were able to go out and replicate on our own. Stayed mostly on the west end, Frazier bay over by island 36. But we did go out to big bay today and hit a hump by Everett's bay. We pulled a couple keepers there on lindys to end the trip. So much fun.

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Caught and ate a mess of crawfish too. The less crawfish the better!

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With all those crawfish you ate it is a good thing you're drinking light beer. grin

Looks like you had a great trip thanks for posting.

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The crawfish were really good, if you can put in the work to catch, cook, and clean them. I bought a frabill trap, and baited it with walleye heads in a mesh bag. basicly you can pull the trap up every 1-2 hours and get 10-20, which pretty much filled it. If I did it again I would make sure to only keep the really big ones. With no shortage of them, it would be a better meal of just big ones. We kept them in bait buckets for 2-3 days off the dock. I only had 5-6 die in that time. I cleaned them all, just by rinsing repeatedly with water, then you have to purge them. This is done by covering them with water, then adding a ton of salt and let them sit for 5-10 mins. We had let our sit in the bait buckets for over a day so they were very clean after the purge. Then we just boiled them with crab spices. 10 min once back to a boil. If i did it again I would make sure to add potatos, corn, sausage, etc.

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Talk about conflicted. I am looking forward to crawfish boils, but I want the rusties to stay to the East of Me.

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  • Your Responses - Share & Have Fun :)

    • Brianf.
      I'm not there, so I can't tell exactly what's going on but it looks like a large area of open water developed in the last day with all of the heavy snow on the east side of wake em up Narrows. These two photos are from my Ring Camera facing north towards Niles Point.  You can see what happened with all of snow that fell in the last three days, though the open water could have been wind driven. Hard to say. .  
    • SkunkedAgain
      Black Bay had great ice before but a few spots near rockpiles where there were spots of open water. It looks like the weight of the snow has created a little lake in the middle of the bay.  
    • LakeofthewoodsMN
      On the south end...   Thanks to some cold spring weather, ice fishing continues strong for those still ice fishing.  The bite remains very good.  Most resorts have pulled their fish houses off for the year, however, some still have fish houses out and others are allowing ATV and side by sides.  Check social media or call ahead to your favorite resort for specifics. Reports this week for walleyes and saugers remain excellent.   A nice mix of jumbo perch, pike, eelpout, and an occasional crappie, tullibee or sturgeon being reported by anglers. Jigging one line and using a live minnow on the second line is the way to go.  Green, glow red, pink and gold were good colors this week.     Monster pike are on a tear!  Good number of pike, some reaching over 45 inches long, being caught using tip ups with live suckers or dead bait such as smelt and herring in 8 - 14' of water.   As always, work through a resort or outfitter for ice road conditions.  Safety first always. Fish houses are allowed on the ice through March 31st, the walleye / sauger season goes through April 14th and the pike season never ends. On the Rainy River...  The river is opened up along the Nelson Park boat ramp in Birchdale, the Frontier boat ramp and Vidas boat ramp.  This past week, much of the open water skimmed over with the single digit overnight temps.   Areas of the river have popped open again and with temps getting warmer, things are shaping up for the last stretch through the rest of the spring season, which continues through April 14th.   Very good numbers of walleyes are in the river.  Reports this week, even with fewer anglers, have been good.  When temps warm up and the sun shines, things will fire up again.   Jigs with brightly colored plastics or jigs with a frozen emerald shiner have been the desired bait on the river.  Don't overlook slow trolling crankbaits upstream as well.   Good reports of sturgeon being caught on the river as well.  Sturgeon put the feed bag on in the spring.  The bite has been very good.  Most are using a sturgeon rig with a circle hook loaded with crawlers or crawlers / frozen emerald shiners. Up at the NW Angle...  Ice fishing is winding down up at the Angle.  Walleyes, saugers, and a number of various species in the mix again this week.  The bite is still very good with good numbers of fish.  The one two punch of jigging one line and deadsticking the second line is working well.   Check with Angle resorts on transport options from Young's Bay.  Call ahead for ice road guidelines.  
    • CigarGuy
      With the drifting, kind of hard to tell for sure, but I'm guessing about a foot and still lightly snowing. Cook end!
    • PSU
      How much snow did you get on Vermilion? 
    • Mike89
      lake here refroze too...  started opening again yesterday with the wet snow and wind...  very little ice left today...
    • Hookmaster
      A friend who has a cabin between Alex and Fergus said the lake he's on refroze. He texted me a pic from March 12th when it was open and one from 23rd when it wasn't. 🤯
    • SkunkedAgain
      I don't think that there has been any ice melt in the past few weeks on Vermilion. Things looked like a record and then Mother Nature swept in again.   I'll give my revised guess of April 21st
    • leech~~
      As I get older it's really not just about sending bullets down range.  Some of it's just the workmanship of the gun and the wow factor. The other two guns I have really wanted which I'll never have now because of their price, is a 8mm Jap Nambu and 9mm German Luger.   Just thought they always looked cool!  
    • jim curlee
      I had a guy hit me with a lightly used 1969 BAR, he wanted $1650 with an older Leupold scope. More than I think they are worth, I made an offer, he declined end of story.   You know if you look at the old brochures, a grade II BAR sold for $250 in the late 60s, $1650 would be a good return on your investment.    Why would anybody want a 50 year old gun, they are heavy, have wood stocks, and blued metal.  I guess mainly to keep their gun safes glued to the floor. lol   You can probably buy a stainless rifle that you never have to clean, with a synthetic stock you never have to refinish, is as light as a feather, and for half as much money, perfect.   I'm too old for a youth gun, although I've shrunk enough that it would probably fit. lol   No Ruger 10/44s.   Jim      
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