URL Report

Well guys it sad to say but I am now home from URL and back to the real world.

The Trip was a success we left Rochester at 3:15am Tuesday and arrived at Agassiz Resort at 10:30. Jeff the owner was at the house to greet us and give us a few pointers to catching Red Lake walleyes.

I was the first one to strike with a 16″ walleye at 1:15pm and the bite stayed pretty consistant from there on out. Most of our fish would come in spurts so no real constant action but about every hour or two we would land 2-3 fish as fast as we could get our baits back in the water. Jeff had our 10’x20′ shack set up in 14ft water about a 1/4mile from the Reservation line 9 miles out from the resort, with a perfect road plowed all the way to the shack. The first two days all of our fish except two came on a slip bobber, Red hook and Minnow the other two came jigging a 1/8oz Living Eye Minnow the 3rd day the slipbobber bite died down and Jigging a gold swedish pimple with a whole minnow did the trick. as far as time frame goes I would say 2pm-5pm and 5am-8am were our best times to put fish on the ice and of course the occasional walleye making the rattle reel go off while we were sleeping was an added bonus

our final fish count for the trip was 38 for the four of us.

35 walleye (Largest was 18 3/4″ and average size was 16.5″)

2 Northern (Largest was 21″)

1 Perch(11″)

along with about a dozen that ended up getting off right in the hole or right below atleast we got to see them!

and a few more that got off half way up of course!

I would also like to take a minute to say a HUGE Thank You to Jeff at Agassiz Resort for all the hard work you did us to make this trip such a good time. Fresh plowed roads everyday. Our shack was in a fresh spot when we got there, shack was very nice and super clean, Bait was awesome and cheap. and most impressing was the time Jeff took out of his busy day to stop by the house 2-3times a day to make sure everything was going well, check the gas and just to sit and let us pick his brain. By far the best service I have had renting a Ice shack anywhere. I would highly reccomend his services to anyone looking to book a trip on URL.

Pics will be up ASAP

And Jack it was nice seeing you up there how did your group do this weekend??

Hope that wind died down for you boys!

Great report, Nate. Looks like a fun trip!

-J.

Nate had a super time up there. He called me many times to rub it in that he was hammerinmg walleyes while I was stuck at work. lol. Sounds like Jeff goes out of his way to make sure his customers are enjoying their time up and are catching fish. Nate has ALOT praise for how well taken care of they were by Jeff. THANKS Jeff.
Thanks, Bill

Nate,
I’ll make a trip summary pretty soon.
don’t think we did as good as you. Temps were brutal cold, and did not let up, nor did the wind.
more soon.
Great to see you.
Jack

The three of us ended up keeping 7 fish, we had 9 “keepers” all trip, tossed back some 12 inchers we caught first thing when we pulled in, we put back 7 over the slot biggest going 19 1/2. Nothing but eye’s. I talked to a couple guys they had 2 crappies around 14″ and nothing else, a guy that was nice enough to plow us a spot AT 2AM! said he had a 5 of his 6 limit.

I did take a look and seen where you guys were (Jack and Mike W), we were pretty much straight north maybe 1/2 mile. We were off Hillman’s road.

Cold??? that was nearly a nightmare, luckily we had 2 generators, but both of them were freezing up, we could actually reached the point sat. morning where we couldn’t get either of them to stay running. It was rediculous, then topped it off with the truck not starting, since the generator died the block heater wasn’t working, we killed the battery of the truck promptly, and the only charger we had was a 2amp battery tender I had as a backup for my flasher/camera battery. We spent 3 hours trying to get the truck started, we totally lucked out that a couple guys seen us having trouble and stopped and dropped off a very nice 2-200 amp charger, it was enough to let us keep trying to start the beast… Did I mention that truck had a flat spot on the starter so it we spent sometime wacking it with a hammer to get it to turn over. I had pretty much given up, thought we were going to end up getting towed in… then it started… Seemes it need it’s fuel system primed for whatever reason. Meanwhile the Generators started working again.

That was a brutal morning, we ended up making the descion to move, we headed down to JR’s road, near the boundry and bottom half of the lake. Through some rumor and such, we chose to stay shallower, we iced another 5 walleye, only one legal. The night bite was nonexsistant, not sure if it was the spot or the diesel truck we left running or what… Missed one nice fish that morning, broke off, but it felt solid I suspect that was the largest fish of the trip, probably a big pike, never know I guess…. There we were in about 8.5 of water with a good solid 3′ of ice, much more than we had at hillman’s. Talked to a guy they had a 4 inch Pike they had caught out in some deeper water.

Plain hook and a big fathead or smaller shiner took most of our fish, I think we had 3-4 on the jigging spoon, 3 of those came before the big front moved in friday.

All that being said we didn’t fish as hard as we would’ve if it weren’t so darn cold, nor if we didn’t have so many engine problems, overall we had more looks and better keepers in our spot on Hillman’s road. The fish we seen come through at JR’s were bigger and moving faster, generally you’d see fish for a minute or two and they’s be gone til the next time they came through, I worked some fish at hillmans for upto 5 minutes, without a bite, I think there were more fish in our hillmans spot that out spot at JR’s. We found a good bite for us at night, taking most of our fish past midnight, 2-4am was a good bite for us. 5-8pm seemed ok. Everything else came few between everything else.

Two final comments on is the roads on the lake are awesome, the ice is in great shape.

AND MN nice and real sportmen still exsist, I couldn’t imagine how much worse our trip would been if we didn’t have some very nice people up there on the lookout to help out fellow fishermen, I’m not sure how the trip would’ve went, but I’m sure it would’ve been much, worse and probably a lot more expensive, nice to know people can take a couple minutes out of their lives to help out others.