Well, the fact that I’m writing this saddens me a little as it means our trip to Kabetogama is already over and its time to go back to reality tomorrow. This trip ‘started’ last February when I was able to convince my parents that we should do a family trip on a ‘walleye’ lake somewhere this spring to break in dad’s new boat and give my wife and myself a chance to relax with some ‘help’ taking care of our new son. Fast forward to May 18th and we are headed north, myself, my wife, our son, my mom and dad, full of excitement. The trip up went surprisingly well, with no ‘extra’ stops needed for Wyatt (6 months old). We were staying at Northern Lights Resort, which was a very nice place with extremely helpful staff, they even cleaned our fish for us. Their harbor was well protected and despite having nearly the worst possible wind direction for their dock, it was still hardly a wave and the boat didn’t get beat up at all. We arrived to a drizzle which held off long enough to get un-packed and boat launched (which they also helped with) but then turned into a fairly steady rain. Oh well, we could use the first evening off to recover from the 8 hours of driving anyway. Awoke Sunday to it still raining, alright get it out of your system so we can have the rest of the week to fish. Being my parents first trip for ‘walleye’ they aren’t used to the idea of ‘bad’ weather being good fishing and dad wasn’t overly enthused to be learning his new boat in cruddy conditions. We did sneak out and catch a couple 20-22″ walleyes and some smaller pike not far from the resort on the windy side of a small rock island. The winds were north east (pretty much all week) and that evening I caught a nice low 20″ walleye and a mid 30 something inch pike right from the dock. Monday, more rains and stronger winds. Tuesday morning, same thing. I’d finally had enough and convinced Dad to hop across the bay and got hit the backside of an island, didn’t catch anything, but it gave a chance to get used to working the boat. That evening we headed back out to try a shallow bay (3-5′) that I saw while we were out earlier. Honestly I didn’t expect there to be walleye in it, but I thought we’d tangle up with some nice pike. Water temp was about 47 degrees and low and behold there were quite a few nice walleye in there. I lost track of the total count but there we caught at least 15, 2 keepers and the rest in the slot. I was throwing a chartreuse #13 Max Rap, my wife a #13 Max rap in Green and my Dad a #8 X-rap perch pattern and the fish were pretty evenly distributed among all of us. Goal #1 was accomplished that night of getting my dad his first walleye and goal #3 of improving my wife’s catch of walleye from our outing at vermillion 2 years ago. (Goal #2 was getting my mom to catch her first walleye which happened a day later). Wednesday we headed into Petersen Bay, initially to try and fish the rock reefs on the north end for smallmouth, but the combination of wind and our captains limited experience ruled that out. We ended up ‘anchoring’ (I-pilot style) in a somewhat wind protected bay of Petersen bay while Dad and I tried figuring out why his HDS suddenly stopped reading the Lowrance map chip (wonderful thing to have happen while you trying to navigate around the rock reefs), which turned out to just be a faulty micro SD card adaptor. But while parked there my wife proceeded to catch two 20 something inch walleye, so we began working the shoreline in Petersen and put together a fairly decent afternoon of mixed bag walleye, pike and smallmouth. That evening produced my mothers first walleye, also out of Petersen bay.
Thursday we gave Tom Cod Bay a shot, working the shoreline again with max-raps and though not much for walleye we did get on some hungry pike that produced some fun action. Pike were inhaling the baits, more than one pike had the back end of a #13 rapala hanging out the backside of its gill plate. That afternoon I had found a couple deeper ‘bowls’ that I wanted to try jigging for keeper sized walleye, the sonar showed them there, unfortunately we went a little too far the other way and they were too small to be worth keeping. I did however catch a small walleye, that caught a medium sized pike on the way up, only to loose both at the boat so I have no proof. We hit Petersen Bay again on Thursday and got a descent mixed bag again, towards evening the wind let down and we got on one of the rock reefs on the north end and caught a couple really nice sized smallmouth.
Friday we returned to the rock reefs and had a hay-day wit smallmouth, a few pike and walleye mixed in too. No idea on how many we caught, but we spent about 4 hours there and you caught a fish on your cast way more often than you caught nothing. For this morning we switched up to throwing a perch #8 X-rap, and 2 – #8 clacking-raps, one gold and one blue-silver, again I’d say there was no clear favorite. We also gave Wyatt his first boat ride mid-day Friday, which he seemed to enjoy despite the fact that the life jacket that fit him perfectly 2 weeks prior seemed a bit small already, but I didn’t try it on him bundled up in clothes either. That afternoon with bright sunshine and little wave action I thought we’d try trolling a deeper break line in Petersen. Dad caught a 23″ eye right away and I thought it was going to be a good afternoon, but it was about an hour before the next fish bit (a pike) and in the 3 hours we ran we only ended up with 2 walleye and 2 small pike. That evening we decided to go back and try our ‘glory’ bay that had held good numbers earlier in the week. Water temps had shot up to 59 degrees and there was a noticeable increase in weeds and a very noticeable decrease in walleye (as in none). We did find some nice smallmouth though so at least our final run wasn’t a bust.
All in all it was a fun week, despite the dismal weather to start off, and my mind is already turning as to changes to make and things to prepare for (hopefully) a return trip next spring. I would recommend Northern Lights Resort as the accommodations were nice, a few glitches as we were the first week of guests for the year, but the staff was very responsive and helpful. Now for the fun part, pictures. These first two are just some shots of the dock area of the resort.
May 27, 2013 at 10:30 pm
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