Reed Bustin' Bass

   I'm a little late with this entry, for that I apologize. All this work and nice weather doesn't make blog entries easy!
   This entry is relative to my last enry, "Extreme Backwoods Panfish." This is about day number 2 of that weekend with Andy Mott and fishing northern Itasca county.

   Being that we are older than we used to be when we started fishing together, we needed to have a much easier day. We chose to fish largemouth bass on one of our favorite lakes. This lake has a public access so, that makes it a whole lot easier! Busting the reed beds for these largemouth bass is something that we taught ourselves many years ago. As far as we know, we are the only ones that take advantage of the excellent fishing these reed beds have to offer!

  The presentation for this type of cover is quite simple. 1/2 - 3/4oz spinnerbaits with willow leaf blades, 7' heavy action casting rod, heavy monofilament line (17lb - 25lb). I used to use braid but, found that I was breaking spinnerbait arms trying to winch these bass out of the thick cover.

   Casting the spinnerbaits with the "grain" of the reeds is important. When I say "grain", I mean the direction the reeds are bent over. This allows the spinnerbait to stay consistant in the water, without hopping out because the line is riding on top of the reeds. On this particular lake the blade color can vary. At times the wind can cause the water to turn up and make it cloudy because it it is shallow, 5-7ft deep. When the water is cloudy we found that colored blades like chartruese or orange work very well! Using willowleaf style blades is important. The willow leaf shape allows the the bait to slip through the dense cover much easier than a colorado blade.



   Reed bed fishing is fun for another reason...it's a multi-species affair! Often pike of all sizes lurk in the beds, along with bluegills, rockbass, smallmouth and the occassional waleye! Although we didn't get any smallies, walleyes, or bluegills, we did find some rockies and pike!

   Bustin' the reeds is always a good time and usually ends with a nice workout! happy hooksets to you all and next up I will tell ya all about the Sheepshead...another fun fish that gets no respect!

Extreme Backwoods Panfish!

   It's mid-winter to late winter, I don't know, around Feb/Mar of 2012, and my cell rings up. It happens to be my very good friend Andy! Andy and I met in 7th grade and have been fishing buddies ever since. Andy must be calling about your 2nd annual Bull Bluegill Bust. I was completely correct. As the re-telling of stories gets my blood pumping, June can't come soon enough. Well, that day came.
   I headed to Side Lake, MN on the evening of June 7th to meet up with Andy at my parents place. Good ol' Mom and Dad's as and probably will always be base camp for this trip. It just works perfect. Andy beat me to the "base camp" cause I had to stop in Blackduck at the Shell station and get some bait and gawk at tackle. It's now 8pm and it's time for some grub and shut eye, we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.
   7am...we are up and out the door by 8. Andy's truck finally comes to rest at our drop site and gear is unloaded. This year we are going to debut a new boat, motor and a new way into this lake. The boat is a 12ft Pelican jonboat and clamped on the transom is a 3.3 hp Mercury "camp" outboard. This a much better set up for the remote access to this lake. The boat and motor is clamped, strapped and secured to a custom rack built for his ATV. This quite the rig! all the fishing gear was loaded in a Otter Wild Side trailer. This was a much easier rig to get to the lake with!

                                                              Let the journey begin! 

2 hours to go 1-1.5 miles...so worth it! It didn't take long and were hooking up with some good fish!

   The technique used was a small jig, tipped with plastic or Northland Tackle's Impluse Waterbug. Absolutely deadly! Hair jigs such as Jim Gronaw's River Critters and Lindy Tackle's Little Nippers were also killer on these fish! Slipfloats were also employed to keep baits from snagging in timber.

   What a fantastic trip this was! We didn't find any super freaks but all the fish were in the 8.5"-10" class! We spent a total of 9 hours back there and loved every second of it. Day two of the trip was spent casting for largemouth bass and pike, as well as keeping a keen eye out for sumo gills, on a different body of water. I will have more on that day tomorrow! 

Thanks for reading and have a good day fishing, Patrick

Hey all!!
 Just reporting in.
 It has been a week since we 've hooked up and I got back from the Grand Marais (MN.) area late Thursday.
 The fishing was great all 4 days and alot of fish were caught.We had some awesome walleyes caught the first night, biggest being a HEAVY bodied 23 1/2 incher that inhaled our shalow running stick bait.We proceeded to catch another 11 fish not as large but were happy with there size and scrappy attitude.
 The next morning Brookies were the target species but unfortunately my 4 WD went out on the trip up so we adjusted our game plan and fished Smallmouth bass instead, again great numbers with fish up to 18 inches, all with a bad attitude, what a blast!!
 The afternoon found us fishing Rainbows on a nearby lake and seeing fish rise as we were landing our boats, indicated the "Bows" were shallow even over deep water.Long-lining spinners and minnow imitations made for a great afternoon of 30 + fish being caught.

 As night fell we decided to go after walleyes on the same lake as the night before, catching only 9 decent fish, but the full moon was fabulous and the company second to none!
 Our Brookie trips were limited to over populated areas that the landings were easily accessible to the general public and fished hard.Although we caught fish, they were not of the size and quantity we re accustomed to.Although we didn't get to our "hot spots" the brookies were still beautifully colored and the fight spectacular.I love Brook Trout fishing!!
 Day 3 found me determined to meet my personal "Grand Slam" of a limit of 4 species of fish in a 12 hr period. I unfortunately came up just short on Brookies to make it a reality,but that goal will continue onto next year.
 I hear I missed out on a hot panfish bite last week so I plan to make up for lost time starting tommorrow.Bluegills beware!!
 Thanks for stopping by and tight lines to you all !!.........Shawn        

On the water!!!!!

   The R.P. Mc Murphy is now ready for the water! His maiden voyage! We (Steph and I) decided on the name R.P. Mc Murphy after the classic movie, one of our favorites, One Who Flew Over The Cookoo's Nest.

   Jack Nicholson's character in that movie is the best! Anyway... on to the fishing business.

   It is Sunday, May 29th and we have over cast skies and calm winds. Perfection for the big debut on the water! I decided to bring Steph to a body of water that was shown to me last winter by a good friend, Adam Forsythe. That winter we had pulled some very good quality crappies and big gills through the ice and Shawn and I hit the same body of water this spring and scored some big crappies. Needless to say I was pumped!
  The new Yamaha run perfect and it felt real good to have a good quality, strong running motor, for once! It didn't take long and I was used to it. I have never had a 4-stroke before so, things are a tad different.
  I don't have a graph on him yet but, I knew right where I wanted to start my hunt for big crappies. We set up with colored hooks and slip floats, and a pail of crappie minnows! I was the first to strike with this beautiful female gill!

                                                                 10" class hen released!

   We continued to catch small perch and lost a few hooks to some toothy critters. It has been a couple of hours, some moving around and, finally...BLACK CRAPPIE GOLD!!!!

12" crappie released!

   This 12" fish took down a live minnow, dancing under a slipfloat! That was the one and only crappie caught this evening. It didn't matter to me if we slayed them or not. Just getting out with the new boat and spending the evening with my wife was just as great!

   As I am typing this, Shawn is in the Grand Marais area of Minnesota, chasing trout. I will be heading to Itasca county in search of big gills and pumpkin seeds with good friend Andy Mott. Stay tuned....

What has Patrick been doing?...not fishing!

   Shawn has been out chasing "scales" more than me lately but, thats ok! At least one of us is able to chase! It's my turn to play catch up with you all, let me fill you in on what's been happening with Patrick...
   I have been DYING to get out on the water. Believe me, I have, especially since my wife Stephanie and I finally purchased an outboard for the boat we bought last late summer! What a long wait and hunt for the perfect motor. We ended up purchasing a 2006 Yamaha 15 hp 4-stroke and, it is in mint condition! It should be for 2000$!

   So...there she is! With this baby clamped on the transom I was anxious to get out on the water and run it. One problem, we are just starting to move. We decided late last year that this was going to be the last year in the rental house. Moving from a house , with a garage, to a apartment in downtown Bemidji is an eye opener and a lot of work. Storage for the boat was a top priority!
   It took about a week to move and find storage for the boat and all the other stuff. Longest week in my life, it seemed! With all this moving going on, Shawn was out hitting hot spots...lucky dude! It's looking like Sunday, May 29th will be the madien voyage with the R.P. Mc Murphy!

Whirlwind Week

This last week and a half has come and gone so fast, so let me get you up to speed.
 Roughly 10 days ago fishing the Bemidji area found the bluegills and crappies in pre-spawn, fish were shallow and sight fishing was the preferred method. Alot of  crappies and a few gills but the gills were of quality size.Pitching 1/64th oz. jigs tipped with plastics was the ticket most days.We didn't get any double-digit ( inches) gills but alot just under.
  Memorial Day weekend found me in the Grand Marais (MN.) area, trout fishing.
Mother Nature was less than cooperative, making our fishing time extremely limited.The truth is we fished roughly 5 hours in 4 days!!The Lake Trout in that area had already moved into the depths and only smaller fish were up shallow. By the time we concluded this  Ol' Mom Nature unleashed a downpour that drove us off the lake.The following day was not much better with 30+MPH winds making downrigger fishing virtually impossible.
 After some deliberation, we decided to fish Brookies, (Brook Trout) only to find a heavy mayfly hatch had happened upon us making the bite difficult at best . We decided to troll small baits slowly to see if we could connect on fish location only to find the bite was inconsistent.The few brookies we did catch were VERY heavy bodied, but spitting up large amounts of insects.Then Mother Nature came for another visit and fog forced us back to the portage,AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
 The rest of the weekend found us in a heated battle of cribbage.
 I am heading back up to the Grand Marais area tomorrow a.m. for another 4 days,knowing a little better what to expect.We will be heading to a different area this time with a little more variety of fish species on the agenda.I have a little wager with one of my fishing partners that I find rather tempting.
 The goal is for one of us to catch limits of 4 different species on 4 different lakes in 1 day!The species included are Brookies,Rainbows,Splake,Lakers,Walleyes,Smallmouth,Northern,Crappie and Bluegill..All fish have length minimums in order to count and documentation (photos) required! I will check in with you all later this week to let you know how it goes,until then, get fishing!!LATER!!!