Guide Question (headed up late Aug)

[Chumba]

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)

[clKiekhafer]

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.

[Chumba]

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.

[neptune]

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.

[Cliff Wagenbach]

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

[clKiekhafer]

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.

[Cliff Wagenbach]

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

[chaffmj]

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.

[Chumba]

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

[clKiekhafer]

We you be telling us which guide you booked? Curious minds need to know.

[Chumba]

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.

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

[clKiekhafer]

Looks like a great time. How did you prepare your crayfish and where they any good?

[chaffmj]

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

Looks like you had a great trip thanks for posting.

[Chumba]

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.

[BartmanMN]

Looks like my Craw boil in Louisiana. Yumm

[delcecchi]

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