Winter Wonderland

I have been spending the last few days on Lake Minnetonka ice fishing and chasing "gravel lizards" around.  Lake Minnetonka and Lake Waconia have great ice conditions, but this ample amount of snow is not going to help our cause.  The dumping of snow we have been getting has made travel on Lake Minnetonka and Lake Waconia very difficult.  I had been using my 4-wheeler to get to and from the shanty but it struggled to get the shanty off the lake yesterday so I was stuck to using my "back-up" truck.  I would not recommend driving your car or truck across lake minnetonka without knowing exactly what you are doing. 

Lake Waconia and Lake Minnetonka fish house rentals are well under way and also I am geared up and guiding many trips next week for walleyes and crappies.  Let me know if you are looking to get out or book a trip you will not soon forget!    

The nice thing about this time of year is the walleye action on both Lake Minnetonka and Lake Waconia.  The bite has been great.  The traffic levels are very low and the fish are willing to fall victim to shiner or fathead danggled in their face. 

My brother Eddie and I were able to enjoy success with jigging spoons tipped with a minnow head.  These were a few 'eater" walleyes we kept for the hot pan of grease.  They did fry up delicious for dinner!  We landed 18 walleyes the first night out and 23 walleyes the second night out.  I did not make it out last night due to heavy snow. 

Winter candy fresh out of Lake Minnetonka!   

Reel Adventures

Traded in my usual tools of the trade for a 5 weight fly rod yesterday and hit the Toccoa River (Northern GA) with good friend Bob Borgwat from Reel Angling Adventures.  As you can see we were very successful on our hunt for rainbow trout on the fly.  My background does not include a lot of fly fishing by any means so this was a great change from the norm and a great learning experience.   

Gunnar was also along for the adventure and was able to land about 3 times as many trout as yours truly.  He has a much better back ground with a fly rod then myself.  Being from MN (the land of 10,000 + lakes), I really haven't spent any time chasing fish in streams or rivers.  Unless I was on the Mighty Mississippi chasing smallmouth and largemouth, but that was always on conventional tackle. 

Bob with a nice Toccoa River Rainbow.  Bob did an excellent job of leading us through the turns and elbows of the river.  If you are ever going to be in or around North GA make sure and take some time to spend a half day chasing these mighty trout with Bob, you will not regret it. 

I spent most of my day trying to fish my fly out of a tree, but I did manage to put it close enough to coax a few nice trout into biting my wooly bugger.  I was managing about 30-40 foot casts with in the first few hours, pretty good for a guy who is used to casting plugs all day.   

  

Sunrise over beautiful Lake Lanier

Was a gorgeous sunrise as we prepared to leave the dock for a day on the water.  It made for a great photo moment.  There was a coating of frost on everything this morning before we headed out.  God was shining down on us; letting us know we were going to have a good day....wait I fish for a living, every day is a good day! 

This is the view looking to the left from my dock.  Pretty gorgeous....would almost think you were in Canada...eh!

The Ranger and Rude getting ready to embarq on another fishing adventure!  They are both good to me time and time again. :)

Back in the saddle....on my a game

Wow....What a difference one day can make.  Everything really seemed to come together for me today and I was putting nice spots in the boat at a rate like never before.  I found the fish to be much for receptive to what I was throwing.  I also threw out everything I was told, threw out all the info about where to go, and threw out all my bad mojo from the past few days and just went fishing.  I picked up a rod and went back to what I was confident doing.  I finally stopped over thinking it and it paid off with big dividends.  OMG was stated many times today.  When they come up boat side, I  had to beg to keep them buttoned.  Between Gunnar and I we boated over 26 spotted bass today! 

FISHWITHMATT.COM on blast! 

Don't mean to take the lime light away from Gunnar; but today was my day...boi!  But he did also have a great day and put many nice fish in the boat.  I think I was trying to give him the 101 clinic today.  We even figured out how to prop the camera up with the timer to get this photo. 

This was the accu-cull scale with one of the giants on it.  It actually settled out at 5.34 but the digital timing was off a bit.  Yes thats right, a spotted bass in the 5 plus range....Magnum!  Our best 5 would have gone over 20 pounds today.Until next time, keep your lines tight and yell FISH ON!