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.