It was my wife, Kristine’s, birthday on August 11th and I asked her what she wanted to do? I was thinking she would want dinner and a movie, a day at the spa, shopping or family day at the beach? She looked at me and said, “We are going fishing!” I have to admit I’m the luckiest guy on the earth. Fishing! My wife said she wanted to go fishing instead of all over all that stuff mentioned above. I was pumped!
Now you need to understand with a new little boy in our relationship she hasn’t been in the boat fishing with me except for a few times up North with Dad/Grandpa Todd when Mom/Grandma Suzanne could babysit Gavin. So she had the itch to catch some fish!
We dropped Gavin off at the new daycare place and Northbound to Leech Lake we headed. We only had a few hours so I had to make them count. I was so pumped to spend the day on the water with Kristine but knew if we didn’t catch fish she would kick my butt!
We pulled up to our first spot and rigged up crawlers on spinner harnesses and started to troll at 1.1 to 1.3 in about 14 to 16 feet of water. I was marking fish but couldn’t get them to bite for the first 15 minutes. It was flat calm and sunny so I was a little worried about catching fish. As we were fishing we were very close to one of my favorite musky spots and I was telling Kristine about some of the fish we caught of the spot. I also told her I left the musky gear at home! She couldn’t believe it but we only had a few hours and I new if I had a musky rod I would have spent some time casting for muskies and again I only had a few hours to figure out these walleyes. I made another pass with only catching a few smaller fish and these fish bite when I was making a turn. They bite on the inside line which means it was going slower. So I slowed the boat down to .8 to 1.0 mph and moved into 11 to 13 feet. We were making our first pass and I saw a musky boat pulling up to the musky spot I was telling Kristine about. I could hear the musky baits clanking and plopping on the water. I then heard the sound of a big head shake and looked over and they had a fish on. Man my heart sank until I looked over and saw one of our rods bent over and I said, “fish!” Kristine fought the fish and I scooped a 27 inch walleye and looked back and saw the other rod bent over and I said, “Another one take it!” It was another hawg and just as I unhooked the first one I netted a second one that was almost identical. What a double! We had a pattern and we continued through out the day catching some real big walleyes including a 28 incher with a total of five fish over the 26 inch mark and several in between. We took pictures of the big ones and let them go. Through out the day we did try trolling cranks and caught a few fish but most of them wanted the slower spinner rig. It was amazing how two feet shallower and .2 mph slower made the difference. If we wouldn’t have changed it could have been a long day on the water.
I should note that Kristine caught all the big walleyes and I caught the rock bass and pike when she let me take the rod. She is a fish catching machine! I should also note I didn’t think once about the musky that was caught only a 100 yards away the whole day. I just enjoyed catching fish with my wife!
Happy Birthday Kristine!
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