July 22, 2013
Tony
Dahl and guests Tom, Mike, Tom, Al, and Gary arrived Sunday evening. The group dined at Thunderbird Lodge and
spent the night on the Chairman II. We
left port at 7:30 AM and headed for Brule Narrows. We had a forecast calling
for some rain and 10-15 mph northwest winds.
Half way out it looked like we were going to get more than 15 mph wind
speeds, and we did.
We
left Brule Narrows South houseboat mooring site and headed east. It would be to
rough to fish the west of Brule Narrows. Jon Balaski, Ryan Schmidt and myself
all agreed it might be a trying day with the weather conditions. We went to
three different areas, each spot had different characteristics; Ryan as on a
break line with an under water point, Jon was on a rubble pile in 23 feet
water, I fished a shallow water reef in 18 feet of water.
The
walleyes were hungry for leeches and large! In fact the under 17” keeping size
walleyes did not start to bite until afternoon. There is nothing wrong with
burning through fourteen dozen leeches while catching 18-25” walleyes. We all
met back at the Chairman a little after 5:00 PM. It was Chef Bernies turn. He
had spent the day getting his barbecued ribs and chicken ready for the evening
meal.
Tuesday
was a beautiful day. Ryan, Jon and I all went to different areas of the lake
and fished reefs in about 24-25 feet of water. It has been the same typical
pattern with the leeches. We are using MinnKota Terrova’s on anchor lock and
fishing the walleyes directly below us. It was just plain crazy fishing. One
walleye after another, plenty of keeps but really big beauties 22-25 inches
long. My hands and fingers are cut to ribbons from the big walleyes.
Jon Balaski
During
the afternoon we trolled with Storm Flatsticks for pike. We caught three but
the action was slow compared to the walleyes. Ryan trolled small crank baits
and lit up both the walleyes (a 28” walleye) and one nice pike 40” long.
Wednesday
was our last day with Tony’s group. We
left right off with Tuesday’s walleye fishing. Jon and Ryan fished reefs, I
fished an island break lines. Once again
they went nuts again. I hope it keeps up the rest of the summer. We ended the
day at 3:30 PM and had a dinner cruise in, Bernie served up barbequed kebabs fresh
off the grill.
Ryan Schmidt
