Tue Feb 13, 2018 10:44 am
My understanding is that the best fishing is just before the Forks rivers blow out, unless they lose their ice very slowly and incrementally, which sometimes does happen. But when the rivers blow out, the Rainy gets suddenly excessively turbid, and walleye fishing screeches to a halt until the clarity improves several days to two weeks later. Then, supposedly, it gets better and better as you near the season closure (April 14 or 15), assuming the tributaries do blow out well before the closure.
I've only done it once. Last year. We were mostly aimed at walleyes, and caught 8 or so, mostly eaters with one big one, before my brother-in-law hooked a sturgeon around noon (on walleye gear). We knew it was a big one and neither of us had landed one before so we decided we would work to land it, no matter the effort required.
One hour later we reevaluated the situation, but decided to maintain our original decision, and kept up the fight.
Two hours
Three hours
just over four hours into it, we were finally getting it near the surface. The water was quite dark, so it wasn't until the tail broke the surface that we realized it was snagged. Anal fin. basically the worst possible spot to hook a fish.
We ultimately did land it. It measured 68 x 28.5". That's a really, really big one. You might think we wasted half the day, but it was very well worth it. We ran up stream 1.5 miles (to avoid getting spooled), and back down stream about 2 miles while chasing it, and so we passed a whole lot of boats twice, who offered a range of harsh criticism, to encouraging cheers, to helpful advice on how to speed up the process. I'm sure that will be the biggest freshwater fish I'll ever have in my boat.
After that episode, we quickly caught a few more eater walleyes, then switched to intentional sturgeon fishing for the last hour of the day. We landed three more in 45 minutes: 62", 45, and 35. Even properly rigged (XXH rod, 80 lb braid), a 62" sturgeon puts up quite the battle.
It took us a while to figure out the walleyes that day, but after comparing notes with the veterans up there, they said that was a slow-to-average day.
-
Attachments
-