Well the weekend did not go as well as I would of liked. All the houses did catch some fish, but it was slow for sure.
Andy, Andy, Sam and Elvin were in North Dakota our newest house. They were impressed with the house so that was good. Andy has been coming for quite a few years and has had some outstanding fishing over the years and a couple not so good fishing trip. Andy ask if they could be off by them self if they brought there own generator so I headed west as far as the ice would allow. They only landed 4 fish the first night so after Andy did some scouting a little further west I moved them about a 1/4 mile Saturday. Sam augured the holes so that was 8 less I have to do this year. I’m closing in on a 100 for the season so far. The fishing did not get better and they only landed 2 more keepers.
Florida had Aaron, Dave and Jim. They seemed to enjoy the house and had some action . I think they landed 12 to 14 so not that good.
Montana had Ken, Carl, Sarha and Terry. They were from Iowa and have used a couple different outfits up here over the years. They liked how the house was equipped and plan on coming back next year. They also had some action but again not that great . I think they went home two short of there limit of 12. They did catch 4 pike through out the weekend. Nothing to big but one did manage to tangle up a few lines for some good laughs.
North Carolina was a no show with out even a phone call?
Derik, Dan the man and Scott checked into old Minnesota Saturday. Derik rented old Minnesota last year and was the first house to pound the crappies and landed 12. They also had some action and landed enough for a big fish fry yesterday. When I stopped in last night Scott landed a nice keeper and I hope they had good fishing last night.
I also set up Ken with his brother and buddy in his new wheel house. They landed there 9 the first night so they had the best fishing of my group.
Jake, Tom and Derik were in the cabin 3 nights .Due to the cold weather they found a house to rent Saturday from Scott Wakefield. They spent the night in a sleeper and managed to catch 25. So the fish were biting and again it boils down to location, location, location.
Now for some of the low lights of the weekend. For some reason I’m having issues with the generators this year. The brand new Honda 2000 quit a couple of times over the weekend for no apparent reason. I may of got a lemon and plan on making the 60 mile trip to Bemidji to demand a new one . My older 2000 also acted up and may be worn out and using to much oil. I have changed the oil on my units on a regular basis over the years and run them in a 3 sided box to keep them out of the elements the 2500 hundreds lasted 10 years. The old 2000 is 7 years old. The cold snap also played a little havoc on the fleet. The red baron needed to be jumped, the dodge prospector also needed to be jumped and blew the heater core while warming up.. Blue thunder fired right up but had a horrible bearing noise from the power steering pump so I will have to keep a eye on that. All the houses have some flooding issues and have 3 inches of water under them. I do not expect any problems digging them out but time will tell. The next couple of days will be spent scouting a new area to the north of Buddy Hillmens road. I crack did cross the road yesterday morning about 3 miles out and was over a foot wide. I would expect hillmens highway will be fully open for vehicles by next weekend