Does anyone have a report from the fishing opener?

Fishing not too bad, better than I expected in the Ely area.

People catching very nice (19-27 inch) walleyes.

They are still spawning in many of the rivers.

Quite a few Pike also being taken.

TGO, do you predict the fishing to get better in a week, or worse as walleyes hit the post spawn funk.

Actualy why am I asking for predictions, didnt you predict ice off april 25th? just kidding

heres my ely area 27 in walleye

We had excellent luck with the lake trout. The two of us caught 14, but only kept a couple of the smaller ones to eat and pack out. Sizes ranged from 3 to 7 pounds.

Smallmouth were hot as were small male eyes. Northerns feeding like crazey.
CB

chadwick,(Let's try this again, the site ate my first reply!)

Hey, give me a break on the ice out. I actually predicted April 19th.

A slight 34 inch dusting of snow stalled it, so I missed by a mere 23 days! :)

Fishing should be very good for the next few weeks, if the weather doesn't turn cold (like our 3 inches of snow last Saturday night)

Biggest fish registered in the shop was a 31 1/2 inch, 11 lb walleye caught in White Iron Lake.

haha.
went out for an hour today and got 6 walleyes, including a 25 and 23 incher.
outlook is good for our trip. hopefully no stupid mayflies decide to come out.

You lucky S.O.B's. Had to cancel trip do to canoe repair problem's and people loafing around with late ice out. But there's hope EP.64 this friday for 6 days.
Nice fish Nathan.

What artificials and depth is everyone catching the walleye on? Thanks!

TGO-missed you at the shop on Friday.

did okay on Lakers on Saturday-of course Oyster was still mostly covered in ice at the beginning of the day. I got 3 between 20 and 25" on hard-bodied minnow imitating wobbling lures that go by a name that rhymes with yank dates (sorry TGO-picked up a couple dozen ciscos but it was too cold to sit around and soak deadbait so we were on the move-besides we were planning to use them on Ramshead for pike-but that's another story). also picked up some pike sunday on the moose river trolling south of agnes. largest was a nice 34" (almost embarressed to say its the largest pike i've ever caught).

tg

TG,

how thick was the Ice, do you think it will be gone by next monday?

how was agnes, LLc, Iron if you went to them?

Oyster started out on Saturday with 3" of rotting "honeycombed" ice covering most of the lake...it was all gone by the end of the day though (pretty amazing!) thanks to the wind and rain. so yeah you'll be in good shape next Monday. Didn't see any ice on Agnes (but I didn't go looking) or anywhere else. Didn't get to LLC or Iron but I would think you would be golden. Don't change any plans for fear of the ice. Have a great trip and report back! I expect you'll be catching some nice fish.
tg
done with classes? when are you working at Cabelas?

chadwick when are you headed up to Iron. I'll be on Iron on the 23. Putting in at 16 early on the 22.


ice should be out like tg said. I asked him the same question earlier in the day.

tg,

Were planning on using the Ciscos on Ramshead!!!!

Why didn't you????

Fess up with the other story!! :)

TGO-
i copied this from a thread in another subforum-not the fishing forum therefore it was hidden from you;)

Sunday woke up with a plan to head down to Ramshead for some pike fishing. Portaged back to the Oyster River and ran into a group we had followed up the Moose River. Nice group-hope they enjoyed their stay on Oyster! Paddled down the Oyster River all the way back to Moose River (south of Agnes). Paddled right over a couple beaver dams. Ran the section of rapids rather than taking the 20 rod portage without any difficulty. Once back on the Moose River south of Agnes we trolled and picked up some nortons on raps. Got one decent pike ~34". Paddled up Ramshead Creek to the 160 rod portage. This was pretty soupy in a couple places. After hopping back in the canoe we were surprised to find a nice beaver dam gateway to Ramshead Lake. Portage on the left.

Now for the fun part. This all happened about 2-3pm on Sunday. I would be curious to know if anyone had similar experience or trouble with a group of paddlers in this area. We trolled down Ramshead and quickly realized we were not alone. There was one group on the lake but they were making their presence known. There appeared to be two canoes. One green-presumably royalex boat (based on color) but it was parked at the NW campsite just north of the midlake islands so it was too far away to get more identifiers. The other boat was white or shiney aluminum and this was paddled by a couple teens to the larger eastern island. The teens were yelling at the top of their lungs back to the group at camp-and vice-versa. I thought it was pretty obnoxious but not criminal. When they realized they weren't alone the teens yelled (honestly you could hear them ACROSS the lake) "we've got company" or something to that effect. I felt like their yelling might be an attempt to drive us away and keep the lake to themselves. We kept paddling and didn't say anything, gesture anything or in any way invite a confrontation. We kept trolling heading for a campsite further down the western shore which I had hoped would be sheltered from their noise. We were now on the south side of the islands probably 100-150 yards SW from the teens on the island. At that point we were scared crapless by a gunshot. Looking back based on the gunsmoke it was clearly fired out over the water (in retrospect this may have been a firecracker). It appeared to have been fired within a 90 degree cone-generally in our direction. I doubt that they were firing on us but I understood it to be an intimidation tactic/harassment. Rather than invite trouble we decided to hightail it out of there. At that point the boys were chopping wood on the island. We assumed they were getting firewood for camp but by the time we reached the south end of the lake it was clear that the kids were now starting a fire on the island (no campsite, no firegrate, not a brain between 'em). when we reached the portage to Lamb the smoke was 20-30 ft high and billowing. The portage to Lamb was actually really nice-airy and flat. The portage from Lamb to Nina Moose was as advertised-brutal. The initial climb from Lamb was tough. In fact the climbing never seemed to end. There were some wet sections and the portage was just plain long ~2/3 mile. There was one large downed tree in the trail which we were able to skirt around. Probably should have chopped and dragged it off the trail but we were exhausted and split up so we didn't-sorry! We were bummed that we didn't get to do our fly fishing (or cisco) for pike on Ramshead but we had a beautiful night and sunset on the southern campsite between the Moose and Portage Rivers. Great site for 1 tent.

so there you have it TGO-will have to get back to Ramshead some other time and hope for more pleasant company:(

tg (apologies for the hat hair)

Wondering if anyone could give me a heads up on whether boulder river is high or low and if anyone has been in there fishing yet. Will be fishing for Smallies and Walleye.

BH

tg,

It may be a good idea to let the Forest Service know what happened and give a canoe description.

They could see who had a permit for the area, and give a little education on etiquette with a letter to the permit holder.

done-called on Tuesday-got a follow up call from Officer Kevin Sheffer (sp?) today (based out of LLC office in Cook)...Nice guy...I will let you know if he tracks these clowns down.

tg

Started on thursday on mudrow...camped on crooked (wed bay) made it to sunday bay on crooked but got blocked out of the curtain falls portage to iron by ice. We camped on sunday bay..next day we bushwacked a trail to the river going into the south part of iron. Fished iron...prtty slow so we decided to try la croix for trout. Made it to just past warrior hill until we hit ice, camped there and came back through boulder river, agness, and nina moose to moose river.....Overall, had a great time. Water was about 5 feet high on all the lakes. We saw rain and snow and sun. Fishing should pick up in a few weeks.

Has anyone fished the Numbered Chain, Hudson, or Insula yet? I'd be interested in anyone's success in these lakes as I will be heading there next Wednesday.

I camped on Ramshead on the 15th on the southwest corner and the campsite was a mess when i got there! Half-burned trash, sweatshirt laying on the ground along with a can of OFF and a 6 foot long piece of driftwood that someone had attempted to burn. I picked it all up. I was rather dissappointed that someone would do this. On a brighter note, the pike fishing was pretty good. All the rivers up in that area are normal depth to maybe even a little bit high right now!