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| This was my third trip to Lake of the Woods
with my father-in-law Vic. We decided that spring fishing was better than fall
fishing; the lodge in the fall was out of everything, and all of the employees
were burned out. In the spring, the employees are eager and friendly, the bar and pantry
are stocked, and the fish are biting. This year was the best so far. The fish were jumping in the boat, and the weather was perfect!! At one point when we were fishing in Redwater Bay, Vic had to take a break, because he was tired of catching fish!! That's what it's all about!! Unfortunately, after our tremendous fish-catching spree, I tried to decrease the resolution on my digital camera so that I could store more pictures, and I accidentally wiped out everything including pictures of a 38" northern I caught the previous morning - my biggest fish up to that point. Luckily, we had many more fish to photograph. The hot spots we've identified to date are Joe's Bay, Micrometer Bay, Portage Bay, and Redwater Bay, but in a lake this big, there are plenty of other spots out there to discover. Anyway, click on the images below for larger versions. Enjoy! | ||||
 I caught this beauty a few minutes after accidentally wiping my digital camera clean. It lifted my spirits a bit. |
 Vic ended up keeping this walleye he caught in Micrometer Bay late one day. After releasing it, we realized it wasn't going to make it, so we scooped it back up and brought it home. |
 We returned to Redwater Bay where we'd probably caught 100 fish within a couple of hours a couple of days earlier. Apparently, I'd missed this one. |
 Same pike, different pose. The water is always like glass in the morning. |
 Different pike - a fatty! |
 These little guys will wear you out when you have to hoist 100 of them into the "boot"! |
 We returned to Portage Bay, and the black (largemouth) bass were in the same location as the previous year! |
 2+ lb smallies were regularly biting. I had some pictures of a couple of 4+ pound large and small mouth bass, but they got erased - you'll just have to take my word for it. |
 A hefty smallie. |
 Another really nice pike. |
 Prettiest (unscarred) big pike I ever caught. |
 MY FIRST BIG MUSKIE!!!! 40" Nice and thick!! Boy was I happy!! Johnson silver minnow did the trick. Vic caught a 42" muskie (his first big one) the previous May (I wasn't there - we went in September) on the same lure in the same bay (Redwater). |
 Same muskie. After landing him (her?), I was no longer the least big angry about erasing my digital images. I sat down, lit up one of my Nicaraguan cigars and let Vic fish until I finished it. That sort of thing makes you an addict...to fishing. |
 Vic caught this huge walleye just minutes before we had to head back to the lodge for the last time. He always managed to accidentally catch big fish, while I had to work at it. |
 Back in St. Louis we realized that we didn't get a picture of us kissing a fish - a tradition we try to photograph. Vic had kept that walleye that wasn't gonna make it, so we kept the tradition ex post facto. Fishing for 14 hours a day for a week in awesome sunny weather did a number on my blindingly white complexion. |
 *SMOOCH* |
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