Thursday we would be trying to catch some northerns. We all hit the lake at 7:30 and went to bay on SW end of lake where Meander Creek flows in. We fished for a few minutes before Jack snagged his first northern around 3 lbs and lost it at the canoe. We had a few other hits but couldn’t manage to hook any of them… After 45 minutes, Jack caught two nice 3-4 pounders which were very fat on his gold Dr. Spoon. Jack then hooked a nice one, probably over 10 lbs by the brief glimpse I caught of it before it dove and busted his 40 lb test titanium leader. He re-set his drag better after that. Sadly, he lost the gold Dr. Spoon which was pretty hot at the time. TJ landed a 30” on a spoon and then a bit later a 32” on a large swimbait while it dangled under the canoe. I caught a nice 4-5 pounder on my yellow 5 of diamonds Troll Devle. After realizing that we probably wouldn’t get any huge ones out of the weedy bay, we decided to start working the rocky points since there were some nice big boulders adjacent to slightly deeper water than in the weedy bay.

I had a really nice 30+ inch fish follow up to the canoe twice, checking out the gold Blue Fox Pixee spoon that I had switched to. He was right next to a downed tree at the first rocky point going north out of the bay… Jack and I cast near that tree about a dozen times and then Jack hit a 36” northern on his red/white 1 oz. Dardevle. I barely managed to get up to measure him without tipping the canoe. 36” tip to tail without squeezing the tail together… Nicest fish for my dad ever and we were both pretty stoked about it. We continued up the shoreline and didn’t get much so decided to go back to camp for lunch as the other guys were already there.

After lunch we all headed out for the last evening of fishing. TJ, Yeller and me/dad headed back south toward the bay and hit Meander creek just below the rapids. We had several hits in the creek but didn’t manage to catch any of them. Yeller and TJ had enough and went back into the bay, where Yeller snagged his first and only fish of the week, a nice 3 lb northern which apparently got hooked in the gills. Jack and I continued south of the bay at the first rocky point and I switched from a spoon to a Rainbow Trout colored #12 X-rap. On my second cast I really let it sit for awhile after the 2nd twitch and hit a 30.5” northern. It pulled right behind the canoe to the opposite side and I nearly lost my pole. This was my personal best northern, as we don’t have many of these in our home state. Lynn and Carl made their way south to us and let us know that Lynn had landed a 42” northern, which made me pretty jealous so we kept on fishing up the west shore, landing a few smaller ones. We worked the islands by our campsite without much luck, keeping eye on the thunderstorm looming to the west. Carl landed a nice 31 inch northern by the narrows between the island as we worked our way back toward the campsite.

Just in the knick of time we got everything covered up and hunkered down in the tents for about 10-15 minutes until the storm had passed. We cooked beef stew and French toast in the rain for our last dinner. Pancakes were on the schedule for morning, which was a quick and easy breakfast. It was getting pretty stinky in the tent by the end of the week as I reviewed the map for the next morning, wondering just how bad the two portages from Ramshead to Lamb to Nina Moose Lake were and hoping that we’d make it back to the entry point by our pickup time. It was a great day for us, catching northern of 30.5, 30, 31, 31, 32, 36 and 42 inches. Whoever says Ramshead is fished out must have pretty high standards, as we were all pretty satisfied with the day. We caught nothing but snakes on Agnes, the Boulder River and Lac La Croix, so this was a nice change. All of the fish were fat, even the few small ones that we caught. We caught a lot of them in the 26-29" range as well. The key to catching them was a SLOW presentation. Carl's pictures were all deleted off his camera when he accidentally formatted his memory card, so the pictures of the 42" and 31" northern were lost along with some other good action shots, so that's too bad...