Hello sportsfans… And welcome to the weekly twist at Ballard’s Resort.
Wow. Let’s get a recap on this past weekend. The doors blew open on Thursday night and the ice fishermen came charging in. It was our first big test of the new winter season. We put some good numbers of anglers on the ice and tested our pods of shacks stretched out on the west end of Pine.
The outcome was… Let’s say… Mixed by Lake of the Woods standards…
Best scenario we had one report with five guys catching 80-100 fish in each of their two days on the ice. And that was absolutely best scenario. Deeper water. Mainly saugers. Lots of little guys in the mix.
Not best scenario? Two guys fished all day, caught a dozen fish, and put four in the pail. As they stated: “The beer was cold, and so was the fishing”.
Back when Kate was born circa 1990, I remember it being roughly the same time frame in December, the walleye / sauger bite was nothing short of tremendous. Over the course of a day we iced walleye after walleye and sauger after sauger to the tune of countless fish. Again, it was early December and the fish gods were smiling. Oh the memories…
The lake that year was like a skating rink. Smooth as glass. So much so that when Jeff pulled in to chat with us, he miscalculated his breaking ability with the wheeler… And used the side of the fish house to bring him to an abrupt halt! More memories…
Also in recollection was the bitter cold we faced that day. But the fish didn’t seem to mind. They were hungry. An exact below zero temp doesn’t come to memory. But hello the ice was shaking, moving and popping that day. At one point it felt like a mild tremor was moving across the lake, and it shifted the shanty about two feet. Additional memories…
That celebratory evening (Kate being born & incredible fishing) was spent “visiting” the neighbors up and down the river. Won’t go into details there… We’ll leave those memories in the vault!
Shall we get back to the present? Yes. It was a rough start for our first “big weekend” of the season. It was kinda like watching our starting line-up get rocked on the mound, but a few batters offered some offensive highlights.
We’ll keep moving… We’ll keep fishing… We’ll get ‘em…
Set the hook!!