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| Message Subject: Minaki Fishing Report | |||
Stein |
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Posts: 199 Location: Nebraska | Well, we got back from Minaki Saturday. Had a great trip. Started out Wednesday night. Arrived at 6:30 after a 14 hour drive and decided to put in for the evening bite. Blue bird day and had been sunny for 5 days, so didn't expect much, but managed a nice 39" on topwater over a shallow reef. Didn't have the camera in the boat, release tools ready or anything. Rule #1 - be prepared. The next day was forecast cloudy, but still full sun. Rough all day. Manged to get a few follows, but nothing would commit. STILL sunny the next day (Friday). Blanked after fishing hard that morning. Did some trolling on some humps that afternoon and my partner (who had never musky fished or trolled) called "snag" after draging over a 10' hump. Stopped the boat and he said "it just moved!". I yelled to get up and start reeling. He fought it for a long time and it stayed deep. Reminded me of flathead fishing. He just stood there with the line going straight down just leaning back on the rod. He wasn't moving the fish and the fish wasn't going anywhere. Finally he gets it up and I get it into the net. It auto-releases (I went barbless this year) but then arched and got his head out of the net. I lunged to get the net back under it but it was gone. I estimated it at 46". That evening I managed to get a 43" and a 42" on yellow/brown 2 oz spinnerbait with gold blades at 6:00 and 6:50pm. Saturday finally brought clouds and some rain. Fished reefs with crainkbaits and jakes. No fish in the boat. Sunday was still cloudy and yielded some follows, and one 40". The fish managed to tear a hole in the net and was hanging half out of the net, just laying there. I reached outside of the net (it had auto-released in the net) and gilled it and pulled it through the hole in the net (Foreshadowing here). One of the others in our group got a 46" on a spinnerbait in a shallow bay. That was the last day of fishing for my first partner. Took him to Kenora to take the 19 hour Greyhound bus back to Omaha. Musky Brian from this board showed up Sunday and fished with me the next week. Took the net into the cabin and repaired the hole with Fireline. Monday was cold and cloudy. Caught a 39" and 44" on a Jake and a Burt over shallow green weeds. While fishing a shallow reef, I got a high-30's fish to follow me twice on a depth raider. We moved off the point to cast across it when Brian yelled "I got him--he's HUGE". Now, I had seen the fish twice and knew it wasn't huge, but scrambled for the net, as it was his first fish. Well, he gets it up and it is HUGE. It's not the same fish I 8'ed twice. He yells that it isn't hooked well and to GET IT IN THE NET!. I land the fish and it is very large. He gets the bait out and is scrambling to get the tape so he can measure it in the net. While getting the tape, the green fish starts thrashing violently and in the matter of seconds, rips a new hole in the net and is gone. We both just stare at the empty net. The first thing I do is check the net. My repair held. It was a fresh hole. Now this isn't a cheapo net, it was a good Frabill net. Apparently, the bags must have a live span, as this net is about 9 years old. The part I feel worst about is he had a nice Beckman in the cabin and had asked that morning if he should bring it and I said "No, mine's already in the boat and it's fine. After spending a minute or so unhooking the fish, we had ample time to view the fish. We estimated the fish at 50-52". There were two fish on the spot no more than 5 yards apart. Tuesday was partly cloudy. We decided to take the long loop down the Big Stretch and through both narrows and back to camp through Gun Lake. Started off great with a 41" off a shallow point on a Jake. We fished all the rest of the day without even a follow. Wendesday was sunny with few clouds. We decided to do some smallie/small pike fishing for dinner. Came down the bank to a small rock/island and I told Brian that it looked fishy. He was just thinking the same so we grabbed muskie rods and made two casts each when a little 32" hammered my brown/yellow spinnerbait. I was happy to get him too, I was soon to find out that it was my last boated fish of the trip. We did some trolling that afternoon and Brian landed some large pike and a 36". Trolling some humps later, I had a large fish on that I never saw. It was deep and head shaking like crazy. Had it on for about 30 seconds when the hooks popped free. I don't know if he shook it out or the hooks ripped out, because I had very steady pressure on it the whole time. Thursday ended up being a trying day with a lot of follows, but no takers. Getting pretty weary after standing on the motor fishing big baits for nine days. Friday is the last day of fishing. Good cloud cover. Nothing in the AM. Actually, in 12 years of going to Minaki, the 41" that I caught on Tuesday is the ONLY fish that I can recall caught before noon. After lunch we decide to milk run a few spots that we moved fish over the last week. One of which was the spot where we lost Brian's big fish, as there was still a 38-40" fish there. We fished it hard and Brian got a follow by that fish. We moved over on the spot a bit and he got a nice strike. It ended up being a nice fat 45" fish. I got it in the boat and was somewhat vindicated by the loss of the larger fish on the same spot. Again, there were two fish on this small spot. All of Brian's big fish, along with some large follows came on a fire tiger Suick. That about wraps it up. I don't know how to post pics, but I have a bunch in my album at http://s51.photobucket.com/albums/f357/68017/?start=all Thanks for looking, Stein. Edited by Stein 9/25/2006 11:06 AM | ||
| nxtcast |
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Posts: 381 | Stein Nice report, Where did you guys stay? | ||
| Stein |
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Posts: 199 Location: Nebraska | The previous nine years we were at Bayview Lodge. The last two were at Paradise Park. It is a new resort. The cabins are on the mainland point in town so it is a drive-to resort and are ony 4 years old. This was the last year at $35/day/person, but they are only going to $40/day next year. Already have reservations for 9/12/07-9/22/07. Great place to stay. We have a marina/gas only 10 yards from where we dock. The only bad part of this year was, even with the falling gas prices, marina gas was still $1.299/liter, or $4.90/gal US. | ||
| MuskyJay |
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Posts: 734 | When I was there, we stayed at Rough Rock Lodge. Sandy and John were awesome hosts, food was great, big cabins. Overall I would like to stay there next time. | ||
| MuskyJay |
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Posts: 734 | What kind of boat were you guys in? I was there from the 18th-22nd. | ||
| Stein |
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Posts: 199 Location: Nebraska | I was in a maroon Cajun bass boat. The others in our group were in red Nitro's. One item that I didn't post originally, but thought it may be food for thought. Monday morning was cold and cloudy and looked like the clouds would last all day, so there wasn't a rush to get out of camp. A father/son group that had never been to Canada and really didn't fish much came up over the weekend to stay with us and had rented a resort boat for the week. For some unknown reason, one of the guys in our group went out on the screened porch that overlooked the lake just to take a look around. He came back in and yelled that a resort boat was idling around in circles and that there was nobody in it. It looked to be our guys' boat. I grabbed one of the guys and we raced down to the dock and cast off on my boat and charged out there. They were only about 200 yards from camp. We spotted two heads in the water. They were dressed very warmly, as it was about 48 degrees that morning, complete with raingear and boots. We couldn't tell which one was which and had to commit to one of them. Fortunately, we got to the dad first. He's about 60 and was completely under when we got there. I looked down and saw him about 2' under, arms floating at shoulder level. He was going down. I reached down and managed to grab his hood. He came up easily until we got his head and shoulders above water level. Then, each of us got am arm under the outside armpits and heaved him onto the deck of my bass boat. He wasn't moving, but there was little that we could do at the moment, as the son was strugging to heep his head up. I don't know how long they were in the water before we saw them, but I figured it was a full two minutes from the time we saw them before we got to the second one. If you have never been in the water with full cold weather gear, you can imagine how hard it is to stay up. In any case, we got to the son and got him up with his arms on the boat and then took a moment to check on the dad. He had spit up the water in his lungs and seemed to be breathing OK, although labored from being tired from trying to keep his head above water. We drug the son on board and motored back to the dock, got them out of wet clothes and warmed up. All's well that ends well, but I hesitate to think what would have happened had we ended up at the son first. Call it blind luck or fate, whatever. Wear your PFDs. Later we found out that while motoring out, the son (driving) saw a rod was going to bounce out and let go of the tiller to grab it. While the rest of us know what happens when you let go of a tiller while under way, he didn't. That boat spun so fast it dumped them both to the outside. The dad had a nasty bruise on the knee where the motor hit him when it swung around, but fortunately was missed by the prop. | ||
| nxtcast |
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Posts: 381 | Jay How did you guys do? | ||
| Will Dykstra |
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Posts: 113 | Stein, those stories always scare me and seem to give me goose bumps when I think about it when I am driving my boat. That must have really been something to be a part of rescuing, The father did or did not make it? | ||
| Will Dykstra |
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Posts: 113 | Nevermind, I just read it through again. Nice Work! | ||
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