Broke Down...

                                 

I am sure you are asking why the title of this post is broke down?!

I recently got the opportunity to travel to the UP to snowmobile with a few friends.  On the first day of the trip we rode about 100 miles and in the process Jordan blew up his belt in the middle of Lake Gogebic with no spare. He was the first one broke down and was not prepared. We are 40 miles from where we started, 10 miles out in the middle of a lake and it is getting dark. Not where you want to be when you blow a belt. When I say blow I mean he totally shredded this thing and it wrapped all up in his secondary clutch making a huge mess.

Hard to see here but his clutch was wrapped up in a mess and had belt stuck between the sheaves. Not a good thing.

Jordan dug at the wrapped belt with no success, we eventually towed him to shore to find tools. Fortunately for us we were able to find an ice fisherman that was a mechanic; he had tools and fixed him up. He borrowed a belt from another machine and nursed it back to the casino.

This was our only stop before we were already towing Jordan's Arctic Cat back to shore to be worked on.

The next day brought great riding conditions but we really didn't get started until 11:30 because we had to drive to Eagle River Wisc in the morning to get Jordan a new belt.  Once we got going it was a great day of riding.

This was our first stop of the day and it was in Kenton at a great little bar where we stopped for lunch, played a little pool, and chatted with the locals.  After leaving the lodge we headed for Bruce's Crossing. 

Talk about small town and a slow way of life.  Welcome to Kenton Michigan.  The owner told us that her payment was $286 a month!!  I mean seriously that is insane.

We never did see a bar with anything but snowmobiles in it.  Maybe they just shut down in the summer?  They really depend on the snow and the snowmobilers up there.  It was fun to see and to ride through all these small fun towns. 

This was the last photo we took before Jordan was broke down again.  After about 100 miles of riding hard on day two Jordan once again was broke down.  This time it was his secondary clutch sheaves blew apart.  The bolts that hold them together just broke off.  I think he is a little hard on his machine and the throttle.  So once again we were towing him back to get worked on.  After getting him back and doing a bit more examining we realized there was no fixing it.  He needed to get a new clutch.  So we packed up the next morning and headed home.  I never had one bit of problem and have to say that the couple hundred miles we did get in were a blast and a good break from the frozen lakes. 

Long Time No Red Lake

As many of you know I used to spend much of my winter on Upper Red Lake.  In past years I would practically live there.  As gas prices went through the roof my red lake trips and clients disappeared.  I never even made one venture to Upper Red Lake last winter.  

This past week I broke the year long streak.  I headed to Upper Red Lake with 3 of my best fishing friends.  Jay Moore, his dad Jack Moore, and Keith Ulstad.  If it swims or flys Jay and I have attempted to catch it or hunt it.  Jack is with MN Eye Consultants the company that performed my great eye surgery and is a large supporter of fishwithmatt.com (ME). Keith is a pilot and is a mutual friend.  He also joins Jay and I on many adventures.  Every time Keith has been along on a Jay and Matt adventure it has been great.  We did Red Lake a few years ago and hammered them.  We did the Delta Marsh this fall and hammered the ducks.  We left town early Sunday morning with a buzz in the truck.

The bite has been slow around home so we were excited to get on a good walleye bite.  We enlisted the help of a good friend of mine Mark Raveling of Raveling Outdoors to get us on the fish.  We arrived after lunch on Sunday and only managed two walleyes the first afternoon.  It started raining early Monday morning and rained all day.  It really turned the fish off for us.  The fish had a bad case of lock jaw from the front that came through.  Even when we marked one it wouldn't bite.  We only managed to catch 4 more fish on Monday. 

Jay caught a few of the better fish, this one went 20" and gave Jay the fight of his life....it pulled all the line out on the tip up before anyone saw the flag up!  Jay also managed one nice pike.

We did end up with some legal keepers which made for a great fish fry.  Nothing better than fresh walleye in the shack.  Don't mind the president in the back ground in his first presidential press conference.  Out in the middle of Red Lake and we are keeping tabs on how much money he (Barack) is planning to spend....

Tuesday we got up early and left because of the rain we wanted to get a head start on our drive.  I also had to get back and get all my houses off before they froze in from the rain. 

Whack Fest 09 Part 2

The first trip was so good we had to go back for more on Saturday when the temps hit 40!  We were back on the Mississippi River.  Needless to say it was a slug fest on some giant smallmouth.  We had doubles and triples all day!  We ran out of bait in two hours, did i mention we had 8 dozen minnows?!

I would say the average fish we caught was 3 pounds with many over 4.  The biggest fish was caught by Hotrod and measured 20 3/4"!  A real donkey of a smallmouth. 

Nice fish Rodney!  I am jealous, you always catch the big ones. 

I could not imagine living anywhere else but MN, the vast choices of fishing we have throughout every season is second to none.  

More ice fishing updates coming soon.