Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Rainy Lake Oil Provides Great Fishing Trip For Customers July 20-24


Larry Keep and Steve VanHeel hosted customers from around the State of Minnesota. 

Jon Balaski left the dock with John and Ryan. I piloted the Chairman II up Rainy Lake to a mooring spot on the west side of Brule Narrows. Jon met us as we touched shore, tied the sidelines of the houseboat to shore and we were off for the rest of the afternoon fishing. Jon ‘s boat had good fishing prior to tying up the Chairman II, they headed right back out to the reefs on the west side of Brule Narrows. Jeff and Steve joined me in my boat. We drove through the Brule and stopped on a reef on the east side of the narrows to see if any walleyes were lurking. It looked like the Hummingbird 1197 was broke a solid double layer of fish was showing from 21 to 26 feet.

We dropped jigs down with minnows to start; the walleyes gobbled them up then quit. We put on half pieces of crawlers and they went crazy.  Before we left they slowed on the crawlers then it was a jig and a leech.  We caught bunches to large, ten nice keepers and some that we will want to catch next year. The guys were excited to go back to the Chairman for Bernie’s famous barbequed chicken.

Saturday and Sunday was more of the same. Walleyes were on every reef just a matter of figuring out what was their favorite food of the day!. We caught them on jigs and crawlers, jigs and leeches, and slip bobbers too.

Monday broke with a 10-15 mph northwest wind.  The MinnKota IPilot would be put to the test in the wind.  We pulled up on the first reef marked the school and dropped the trolling motor down.  It held us in one spot and we jigged up walleyes for three hours straight.

During the last afternoon Larry and I fished together.  We both had Ontario licenses so we checked out some spots over there. It did not take us long to head back to the Minnesota side as there is just a lot of walleyes on our reefs. Great way to finish the trip.