Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Birth of a deer camp

Alright thanks, that's what I got from a friend at work here too, he said about the same as you Tom.

We'll give it our best.

Why is this day going by so slowly?



Dave

Waxies would be worth bringing along to try. They pack light. Crappie minnows but I realize thats not really feasible on the trip your taking. When I was a kid, I stayed busy all day long catching panfish with whole kernal corn on a hook. Sunnies go nuts over corn! Just open the can and you have bait for a day. Small jigs tipped with a piece of crawler should work too. My experience with crappies is, if you find them and they are biting even a bare hook will catch them. That is what makes them so fun. I fillet them also. A fillet off a decent crappie yeilds a good amount of meat. You don't end up with much on sunnies but they sure are tasty!

Dave,

Like others have said over structures is Good, fish for them like you Bass kinda tease crappie with a few twitches then a little real in, twitches then alittle real in, on and on and soforth. I've caught buckets full using dark and light purple and chartruese spelling... Roadrunners they are a crappie jig made of a pretty fluffy material with a small spinner on the head. Small spinner baits and Rooster tails work well to and all these work on bluegill too.. I fillet them, Have a WOnderful Trip!!!!

Dave took pics for ya, fishing lure favorites, incoming email to you in 5 minutes..

thanks wabster.

Ladies & gentlemen, Dave has left the building

expect to hear from me around next Monday or so.

Keep the fire lit!!

Dave

Well we made it back, had great weather, great trip. the wind made it really tough on us coming out of BWCA on Sat and the portages were a gruel but it was probably the best camping trip I've ever been on. not a whole bunch of time this morning so I'll just put some pictures up quick & maybe try to explain them all better later. sorry about the time date stamp on some of these pictures, again the date is wrong & I didn't know it was turned on, wish I could get that off of some of these pictures.

they are downsized & quality reduced as most of my pics are to try to save on web storage space especially since this thread is already too long the way it is.

Here goes.

Trucks ready to go.

the group before leaving my dad's place Thurs morning.

unloading the truck at the entry point.

Me making my first portage with an old Aero Craft 17' canoe (this would be moments before I threw my back out)

Me goofin with the youngest camper of our bunch. We left our 4 year old with grandma & grandpa, which was a good decision!

the 2 older girls taking a rest, me digging in the tackle box. this was a rest stop on our canoe route.


Me & the girls at our campsite.

side profile shows my winter fat storage area very nicely.

The 2 younger campers goofin in the canoe.

The boy, doing what he does.

The girls, playing some cards.

Me & the boy taking off to catch us up some supper.

Showing off the catch of the day.

Really gold bellies on the walleyes in that root beer colored water.

Camp cook doing up some breakfast on day 2.

We ate pretty good.

the 2 older girls exploring a little bit on day 2.

More exploring, found a little cave.

Later on day 2, Mrs. ND, Me & the 2 boys make a grueling portage into a 300 acre lake off to the east that my dad raves about. He says it's full of huge pike. Entering the portage the boy can be quoted as stating "this better be worth it". Well, He casts a meps number 5 on a medium spinning rig with 10lb mono & no leader & guess what? From shore he hauls in this fish. Taking a measurement, 41.5 inches with the tape.

That's right, smile like heck, I think it was worth it.

Heading for the stringer.

How do you cary 30 pounds of fish on a 3/4 mile portage of rocks & tree roots that's basically a huge hill? Just like this. My oldest boy helping out his big cuz.

these next few are just some real nice scenery photos that I liked.




And one final shot of our group before breaking camp on Saturday.



Dave

Sweet Dave that is a trip that keeps the memories fresh and your family close.

So what was the hogleg ya got strapped on there?

Was wondering who would be the first to spot the little side iron

It's an old High Standard long horn double nine .22

I wore that in & I gave The older boy a ruger MKII .22 to wear in. The plinkers stayed at camp once we made it back in there. I'd say it's for critters, but really it's more for better sleeping at night in the tent for the kids, (that whole feel safe thing)and if to serve any real purpose I suppose just regular old self defense, there were some jerks up in BWCA recently that terrorized a family of campers pretty badly, they are all in custody now & face some grim futures but if it happened to me, well they would probably just be "missing people" instead of people sitting in jail.

I'd rather have a gun & not need it than need a gun & not have it right?

Dave

Yeah I hear ya Dave that Burntside shootout scared the bejezus out of a bunch of folks. State charges are done and the federal thing is still out there I guess.

With all the critter attacks I been hearing about lately I am thinking I may start carrying a sidearm out and about again. The long gun is nice to have for some instances but difficult to use when under a canoe or in the thick stuff. Especially with all the cougar sightings lately and some fairly agressive bears this year.

Kids definitly slept better when we camped up on the Echo Trail last summer knowing Dad had artillery present.

Nice snake the boy got there, ask Gavidae_Esq to show ya what his boy caught last week it will make ya reconsider swimming

I hear ya about the swimming. I don't swim in these lakes we just came out of. between the fresh water baracuda & the jumbo snapping turtles, no way in hell.

A gang of rouge snappers raided our camp stringer while me, Pam & the boys were over in the next lake fishing northerns & the girls decided to stay back at camp. They were playing cards when they heard the noise from the stringer along the shore. they spotted trouble instantly. They played tug of war with the turtles for a bit & came out with half fish on a stringer, so they used the remaining fish to bait the turtles back up & they messed with them a little, no fingers were lost so I guess it's all good.

We saw lots of big mean snappers & the above fish in the pictures is a trophy in many books but probably par for the course in those lakes.

No swimming for me, I brought a shower bag in this time. Shower bag very good.

Dave

Hey dave-those are some great pics!

On a side note, I am gonna do deer in Minne one way or another this year. Any idea as to when the tags go on sale for Non Residents?

Thx
Dober

I love me some 41.5" northerns. Then next best thing to cathcing 'em and eating 'em is looking at pictures of them with people that were eatin' 'em.

My step brother and I lost a stringer of northerns to snappers too. Tied the stringer to the dock, went up to have dinner and when we arrived back for the evening bite, out gators were nothing but heads. Kind of funny now but at the time we were not very impressed. Lesson learned I guess.

Nice to see you back Dave. It looks like everybody had a great time. As always, great pictures and a great family too.

I hope your trip went well...It sure looks like it did.

Tom

I'm not sure Dober, sure would be great to meet up with you though. If you find yourself homeless/huntless in
MN, we've got a bunk for you, and I've got a feeling we wouldn't need to help you into a stand or hold your hand with the hunting part


I can check into the non res thing, I don't think the 08 hunting regs are printed yet for MN, or at least i haven't seen any books out yet. I'll check into it but I'll bet one of our people in the know may be able to chime in before I can get an answer for you.

Dave

Thx Dave, I'll just give a check on line and thx for the invite. But, as long as Dad is around I won't be going far if you know what I mean.

Dober

Tom, it was an awesome trip. my favorite of my 2 blind purchase used canoes quickly became the old Aero Craft 17 footer or as the girls called it "the indian canoe" it's old & well used but wow, not too bad to carry on portage pads for a 17' alum, fast, easy paddling, stable, deep, wide, real nice canoe. Anybody wanna buy an alumacraft standard weight? that thing was nicknamed the "stone boat" or "the crusher" for the abuse it served up on portages, oh what a nightmare.

But as you can see the fishing was excellent, we ate fish every night, walleye & northern cooked over the fire. But we didn't eat the big one. We actually took the 41.5 incher all the way out & it's at the taxidermist right now. The boys made that first portage with the big fat 41.5 incher and a respectable 6-7 pounder on that cedar pole I rigged up for them. about 3/4 mile of roots & rocks, up hill, down hill, up hill, down hill... repeat until almost dead... they got it back in the water as soon as they reached the water on the other end of the portage & we kept him in cool water for the rest of the night by rigging a water safe back at camp by flooding a canoe & pulling it up on shore full of water. We stored the big northern in that water filled canoe overnight to keep it away from the snappers. Then the boys towed it behind there canoe on the way out after we broke camp on day 3 up to our last portage. Last portage had a cool stream near the truck parking spot so the boys carried the big fish quickly to the stream & dropped it in there to keep it wet & cool while we portaged & packed all the rest of the gear out, once we were ready to leave in the trucks we grabbed the fish from the stream & put a white kitchen style garbage bag over each end (head & tail) to keep him clean & moist & we made a B-line for Ely to get him on ice.

Once we had the fish iced down we went for dinner at that resturant/bar I talked about called Cranberry's, well it changed names, I think they called it the "boat house" now, but it hadn't changed much other than bathroom renovations & the adition of a micro brewery which wasn't quite finished yet.

Food was still great, waitress had to step back quickly after she set the food down so she didn't get bit.