Just returned from the Illinois River FLW Tournament and the official launch of the www.onthewaterlive.com website.  The fishing on the Illinois river was good if you were looking for unbelievable numbers of small fish.  If you were looking for quality fish, well, the bite was anything but great.  I can honestly say I have never caught more fish in a tournament or prefishing then I did over the last week.

For those that are not familiar with the Illinois River, it is primarily a sauger fishery with good numbers of nice sauger.  However, due to the timing and high water conditions earlier this year the small male sauger were the only thing that would bite and they were hungry.  For those that tuned in to watch the live footage of the tournament or prefishing you saw a ton of small fish caught.

So how did the tournament unfold?  I ended up in a 3 way tie for 17th but after the tie breaker I was 19th.  That was good enough to get me to collect a little Evinrude Contingency money but overall it was a disappointing finish again.  Jason Prezurkat, my teammate ended up making the top ten and finished in 6th place.

The real exciting part of the tournament for me was the launch of www.onthewaterlive.com which I have been working tirelessly on over the last few weeks.  After Detroit I knew the concept could work and with some equipment changes we went live for the first time from the boat in a walleye tournament and the overall reaction was amazing.

I encourage everyone to check out www.onthewaterlive.com and become a fan on Facebook.  I recently updated the live schedules.  The same footage you see of me on OTWL is also available right here by clicking on the Camera link on the home page.  Thats all for now.  Almost time to get ready for Red Wing but hopefully I can get in a little Bluegill Fishing before I have to leave...maybe even LIVE.

FLW Detroit is complete and it was really nice to get back on the water and competing again.  The Detroit River is a nice venue as you know you will be catching fish in many different ways and usually the fish are VERY nice.  This trip was no different although there were a few things that I would have like to see end up a little different, but, I will cover that later.

The prefishing for this tournament was very good.  My first full day on the water was spent trolling on Lake Erie.  I opted to troll crankbaits despite the water sitting at the 52 degree mark.  Fortunately we were able to connect with a lot of nice fish on day one, including the giant pictured here caught by Matt Carlander, my practice partner.  The pattern I found the first day prefishing is the same pattern that I used for the tournament.  The pattern was good, unfortunately the conditions changed some which required some adjustments.

Day two of prefishing was spent jigging the Detroit River and after spending a few hours getting the bite figured out in the extremely clean water I felt very comfortable if we were to be forced to stay in the river.  I felt if I were to just fish the River A weight of 25-30 pounds was possible.  However, the bite on the lake was more consistent and the fish were bigger and 30-37 pounds was what we were looking at out there.

So, by day two of prefishing we pretty much committed to fishing the lake as long as the conditions would allow.  When I say we, I am referring to Mark Courts and Jason Prezurkat, who I will be teaming with for this FLW season. Mark, Jason and I will be fishing all the FLW events and are good friends on and off the water, so a partnership was fitting with all the changes in the walleye world leading up to this year.

The new FLW format only allows for two days of fishing before the "cut".  On day one when I arrived on my spot it appeared the fish were gone.  I was marking very few fish despite catching two fish in my first pass.  The bites were encouraging but the Humminbird looked very empty.  Something had changed and my guess was with the windy conditions the fish moved up in the water column and thus I was not marking many.  So as the day progressed and the bites were few and far between, I made adjustments but never did pull my baits high enough.  Basically the fish were 5 ft under the surface and I did not make the needed adjustments to my program.

On Day two when I arrived at the same spot the graph was once again full of fish and they were right where they were prefishing.  After my first two trolling passes I had 4 in the box and the day continued that way.  We continued to pick up fish all day as long as we could stay on the dirtier water.  My partner Gary Speicher and I had a great time pulling in nice lake Erie walleye including one Giant that weighed close to 11 pounds.

In the end I blew the entire tournament on Day one by only weighing 4 fish.  Despite making a nice comeback on day 2, the damage was done.  The sad thing about this tournament was there were only 55 boats.  With that few boats the FLW only paid down 11 places which was very disappointing to most of the anglers.  The reduced entry fee that I discusses at length last year seems to be doing just what I thought it would do, drive away all the anglers that supported the circuit in the past.  I will continue to fish because I want to support both AIM and the FLW circuits.  But, without a way to increase the payouts and no TV coverage there is very little incentive for anglers right now.  But, enough about that, I have another tournament to get ready for and I am looking forward to heading to the Illinois River. 

Well if you have been able to watch the live footage you know how things are going.  We have been catching fish each day but as always you never know just how big of fish it is going to take to make the cut.  The good news is I am catching fish and the bite is pretty good overall.

The Live footage usually starts out between 9 and 10 AM Central time.  I have been monitoring when people are viewing and that seems like the best time to get things started.  I have been running live each day for a total of about 5 hours a day.  I have worked through countless bugs in the system and actually can greatly improve the feed that you see, I just haven't made that change yet.  For this tournament I am going to go with what I have set up.

The wind has been a MAJOR issue so far but I have that taken care of now for the next tournament.  I have learned a lot about this and will do much better at the next tournament.  The good news is even in tough conditions like we have had it still works.  The only other issue is my Nikon battery is dead so I can't put up all the great fish pictures I have on my blog.  Well, lots to do so I better get back at it.

Ok, so you noticed I was gone.  Well, at least a few of you were wondering where I was and emailed.  The good news is I am alive and well.  I decided to take a little break from the ice fishing and take my family to Disney World and then a Disney Cruise to the Bahamas, which was a much needed break.

Normally I do not take vacations in the winter because I am busy with ice promotions and ice fishing but this year I made a promise to the kids that if I won a tournament we would take a vacation, and I did!

The fishing when I left was very tough and I didn't think I would be missing much.  For the  most part the bite was tough on most lakes and the fish were not staging in the classic spring spots yet.  Oh, how things have changed.  I believe the temps AVERAGED 40 degrees while we were gone.  This is exactly what we needed to get the late ice bite going and it is.

No matter what part of the state you are fishing, if you are after big Bluegill and Crappie they are on the chew.  It is time to start looking to those shallow late ice spots because for the most part the snow is gone.  The late ice bite doesn't usually start this early but it is in full swing right now and will only get better.  I will be targeting 9-12ft of water my next time out but don't be afraid to look shallower in the AM and PM and deeper during mid day.

Well, I have a lot of catching up to do.  I have some fun trips coming up before I head out to the Detroit River on April 1st.  Between now and then I need to get my new Evinrude powered Ranger and finish the Rigging.  So, keep you fingers crossed that my boat arrives early and the ice holds on for a couple more weeks! 

Saturday AM started just like the day prior, brutally cold temps and some very stiff equipment.  However, today we were going to be fishing the local Lake Trout Derby.  What was particularly exciting about this Derby was the fact that you got to fish wherever you wanted as long as it was in Regina Bay.  You drilled your own holes and fished as hard as you want to.  All fish had to be weighed in by 4 PM and had to arrive at the scales alive and capable of being released.

At first I was a little skeptical of the fact that we could get a fish to the scales alive but we had a plan.  First we had to catch a fish to weight.  Second we would immediately put it in a cooler full of water and head to the weigh-in with the fish in the cooler.  Matt from Crawford's Camp assured me it would work, and it did, just great.

Using the LakeMaster chip we split our group of seven into 3 groups covering 3 nice breaklines in 50-70 feet of water.  All the spots were pretty similar, nice points extending out to deep water with sharp breaklines.  Again, this was my first year having the LakeMaster Data on this trip and it yielded big results.

Spot one for Noah and I ended up being a dud.  Lots of baitfish and tullibee but not the big laker's we were looking for so we headed to spot two, near where Greg, Matt and Brian were fishing.  After a short 5 minutes of jigging I tied into a decent trout.  It was very interesting fighting the trout with money on the line as it brought me back to my summer walleye tournaments.  I honestly love that feeling, it just adds a little pressure to the situation!  The fight didn't take long and off we were on the sled to weigh the first trout of the day a nice 9.9 pound fish.  Hey, we were on the board.

Upon arriving back at the group I was told that Moreno was hooked up with a fish so off Matt went with the sled to pick up Moreno's fish.  As it turns out Moreno and I were fighting our fish at the same time, his was just a lot bigger and took over 20 minutes to land.  Off to the scales went Moreno and weighed in a nice 17.5 pound fish, good enough for second place at the time as someone had weighed in a 23.5 pound fish inbetween Moreno and I.  That was going to be tough to top for sure!

After a flurry of action we decided a move was in order.  While Matt Carlander and Moreno stuck it out in the place that produced the 17.5 pounder the rest of us moved a couple miles to a nice steep shelf that extended out into Regina Bay.  As I was clearing holes Noah hooked into what appeared to be a whitefish, until it made that long, drag screaming, 60 foot run down to the bottom.  Yes sir, it was another trout and the move was paying off already. 

This was Noah's first battle with a trout and at one point he asked for the "fighting belt" which you saltwater guys can appreciate.  Noah patiently battled his trout for over 18 minutes before we were finally able to get the big head of the fish in the hole.  Out came our second biggest trout of the day a nice 16.73 lb fish.  Man this was getting fun!

As Noah and I arrived back at the group Matt Crawford and Greg were working another fish that would not bite.  Finally after some coaxing Greg had our 4th trout of the day hooked up.  Greg battled this fish as it made drag screaming run after run.  With cold hands and a sore back Greg wasn't sure if the fight was ever going to come to an end, but it did.  Out came a 16.2 pound trout and left our group sitting in 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 10th place.  Despite over an hour of fishing time left, we decided we should try to catch the evening walleye bite so we put a quick end to our tournament day and headed out across the lake for some quick walleye action before the tournament awards.

Being short of time we opted for a spot close to camp to fish walleye.  The walleye bite would best be describes as slow but that didn't stop us from having a great time.  I should clarify that slow means each of us only caught a "few".  Hardly slow by certain standards, but after all, we were in Canada, eh!  We ended the night absolutely exhausted from laughing and making jokes about the days fishing and how lucky we were to catch those nice trout.

Before heading back to camp for the night we headed over to the weigh-in to see if we ended up in the money and sure enough, we took 2nd, 3rd and 4th and all 4 of our Trout were in the top 10.  Not bad considering there were 67 anglers fishing the Derby.  It was truly a great ending to a great day of fishing!

I just returned from my first trip of the year to Crawford's Camp at Sioux Narrows Ontario.  Once again we had an excellent trip filled with fun, friends, food, fishing and photos.  Despite the extremely cold temps, which touched -32 Fahrenheit, we were fortunate enough to get a chance to fish Lake Trout, Crappie, Walleye and Perch.  A true multi-species paradise, the Sioux Narrows area offers it all.

Since we had very little time to fish and lots of bites to sample, we kept a strict schedule on this trip that would allow us the chance to fish a local Lake Trout Derby on Saturday.  You will hear more tomorrow on how that Lake Trout Derby worked out and of course the results.  But, lets get back to the fishing Friday.

Friday morning started off a little slow as everyone unpacked their gear in -22 degree temps .  For the most part all the gear started with the exception of one auger and one snowmobile, not bad considering the extreme cold.  By 9AM we were on the ice jigging for Lake Trout and anxiously awaiting the first "hook up".  This was my first time fishing the Sioux Narrows area with LakeMaster surveyed data and I can say it makes a HUGE difference.  Not only does it make navigation much safer but in makes finding that spot on the spot possible, which tended to yield big results.  Our first spot of the morning produced only only one large fish, a nice 11 pounder that I hooked into just after setting up.  Despite seeing 5-7 other larger fish on the Humminbird's and several misses, we couldn't put anymore on the ice.

So, with mid-day approaching we opted to make a run for crappies.  Since the area we fish crappies has some dangerous narrows we had to make several portages, which is typical when fishing the Northern reaches of Lake of the Woods.  However, at the first portage we were greeted with fallen trees, and lots of them.  The area had received 7 inches of new, wet,  heavy snow prior to our arrival and it knocked down lots of trees that needed to be cleared before we could fish.  Matt Ryberg from Crawford's Camp and Greg spent an hour clearing trees as we inched along behind with the sleds.

After our hour delay we caught just the tale end of the midday crappie bite, which we thought we had timed perfectly prior to our delay.  I believe I had 6 nice slabs on the ice before the bite turned off as the were just SLAMMING the tiny Demon Jigging Spoon pictured to the right.  We all got to see a glimpse of what is usually an excellent crappie bite, just before it shut down.  But, that is how fishing goes and that is exactly what we knew we had to do....go!

After only fishing crappies for roughly an hour, we decided to make up some time and head out to fish walleye a little early.  Fishing Walleye always yields a few huge jumbo perch so we decided to get out early and try to hit the perch before the walleye moved in.  And, just as planned, the perch were hitting the ice fast until the walleye showed the last hour of the day.  The group decided a fish fry was in order so we kept our limit of walleye and about 15 perch. Now that is some good eating!

We ended the day back at our Cabin at Crawford's Camp enjoying a few cold beers and telling fish stories.  Since we were fishing a Derby the next day we put together a game plan as to how we would set up to jig for trout.  Despite the laughs and fun it is jigging trout together in the same area, we decided our best chance to win some money was to spread out and cover some water.  With that, we shut it down for the night all anxious to tie into that winning Lake Trout tomorrow.

I got a chance to spend a great afternoon with my daughter Jadyn on the ice before the Vikings game.  After looking back now the fishing turned out far better then the football game, although both were good times.  There is no way a Vikings loss could ruin the great day I had fishing with my daughter.

Jadyn loves to go fishing.  She is a very energetic 6 year old and although most of her time on the ice involves playing with the livebait and scooping out ice holes she has learned the  patience needed to catch fish. I knew going out this trip would be a test for her as we were going tip-up fishing for 4 hours.

After getting set-up at 1:00 it was time to sit back and wait for flags.  After waiting 20 minutes with no action I told Jadyn to go walk around and check each tip-up to make sure they look good.  As she walked by the first one, the flag went up (I love it when that happens).  As the line was slowly spinning off the reel, I had a sneaking suspicion that this was going to be a bass, but after Jadyn set the hook there was nothing there.  Jadyn looked at me and realized whatever hit, stole our bait.  As Jadyn headed back to get more bait the next flag went up.

With a second flag in the air and line once again being pulled off the tip-up, we decided to let this one really eat.  We patiently waited as 30 yards of line got pulled off before I told Jadyn to go ahead and set the hook.  With a big sweeping hook set Jadyn said "I got it" and she was right.  Slowly hand over had she pulled the line back and after a little fight out of the hole came a nice 3 lb largemouth bass.  Jadyn has caught a couple fish on tip-ups before but this was her first solo job and she was excited.  We snapped a few pictures and put her back.

Before the excitement of the Bass faded we were back at it with the line screaming off the Frabill tip-up.  This was a new tip-up in my set-up so I knew it had a lot of line on the reel so we let it go.  There is no doubt this was a pike, and by the runs it made taking line off, I was guessing big.  After a couple long runs I told Jadyn to set the hook and she did.  It became evident after the hook set this was going to be a team effort to land the fish.  So, dad and daughter worked together on this project and after a  tough fight a 36 inch Northern Pike was on the ice.  Jadyn was first shocked and then excited.  The size of the fish took her by surprise at first and the look on her face was priceless.  Dads, this is what it is all about!  We snapped a few photos and then I made the decision to keep the fish.  First it was bleeding bad from a deep hook set and second, because Jadyn wanted to.  It is now over and Grandpa's house to be pickeled.

We ended our day with a little 3lb pike and then decided to head in for the Vikings game.  For Jadyn this was a great experience and she learned a lot about tip-up fishing.  For me, well it was another great day on the ice and even more special is the fact that I got to spend it with my daughter.  My kids know their dad has to travel a lot for fishing, so these days are always special to all of us.  Again, dads, this is what it is all about!

I spent a portion of this Holiday weekend fishing Lake of the Woods.  After losing a hometown friend to a heart attack this past week, it was nice to get away and get back to fishing.  With very poor reports from the lake I was not sure what to expect when we finally hit the ice Saturday evening.

After only getting on the ice at 3:00 PM Saturday evening I was surprised to see to two fish on my Humminbird ICE 55 when I dropped the transducer down the hole.  After all, the reports I was getting on the drive up from guys fishing was terrible.  As soon as I dropped my #2 Red Glow Demon Jigging spoon tipped with the head of a minnow down the hole I had two walleye chasing up for it.  For those that don't fish much, this is a great sign as usually indicated the bite is "on".  Instantly I had a nice 17 inch walleye on the ice, and then another and it didn't stop there.

Matt Carlander was fishing with me this weekend and it didn't take him long to get in on the action.  In fact, after a flurry of action for 10 minutes we had already kept 3 nice walleye and 1 jumbo perch.  After two hours of fishing we had caught 23 fish and were able to keep our limit of nice walleye, a couple of sauger and had one 22 incher that was released.  The action was really good for the short time we were able to fish.  At about 5:30 we packed it up and headed on in to Wheelers Point where we were staying.

At Wheeler's Point  we met up with some friends and got to enjoy a great fish fry and we were excited to get back out on the ice the next day.  The fish we found were very active and usually will stick around the area for a few days when you find them like we did.

Sunday we were greeted by warm temps again and a nice mix of sun and clouds.  With the conditions very similar to the day before we were looking forward to another great bite. However, it didn't take long to figure out things had changed quite a bit.  Gone was the bait we were marking on the Humminbird's and gone were the fish for the most part.  Despite drilling quite a few holes over a large area of Mud we just could not locate the bait and fish we were "on" the day before.  So, back to reality it was.  We still caught 22 fish on the day but were only able to keep 6 of those.

So what changed?  Well when you are on the schools of bait and the walleye are chasing up and down the water column the bite can be excellent.  Most of Saturday evenings fish bit 8-12 feet under the ice over 32 feet of water.  On Sunday, that high riding bait was gone and so were those active walleye that were chasing them around.  The good news is we still had a great time, got to have a great meal of fish and a lot of fun with friends, which in the end is what it is all about.  It is always nice to get back up to Lake of the Woods and visit with the friends I made when I lived up there.

It has been extremely cold the last few days but that has not kept me off the ice.  Over the last few days I got out to do some Tip-up fishing for pike, angling bluegill and even a little spearing.  I took this picture in my truck on the way out to the lake Sunday AM.  The ironic thing is it said the same thing Saturday AM.  Maybe -24 is all the lower my thermometer goes.  Either way, it was cold out but without any wind it really wasn't that bad out.

So, how about that weather?  This cold front must have those fish shut down, right?  Wrong!  This kind of cold weather is the good kind of cold weather.  This is stable cold weather.  The fish don't know it is cold out.  They know the pressure is stable and there have not been any major changes or fronts since Christmas and the fish are biting.  Both the Bluegill bite and tip-up fishing have been been excellent and the spearing, well that has been fun too.

I haven't speared for about 20 years but since Minnesota has allowed angling while spearing I decided to get back into spearing this year.  The nice thing about spearing for me is not actually spearing fish, as I rarely even throw the spear but rather getting to see how fish react to certain things.

You can learn a lot by watching fish on underwater camera but you get to see everything while looking down a spear hole.  Plus, fish act much different while in shallow water then they do while they are in the deep, dark depths of the lake.  So, this year I am back at it spearing and having a lot of fun watching fish up close and learning lots.  Pike are very predictable but some of those huge bluegill that come in and take over a minute to size up your bait before they bite really test your patients.

Speaking of bluegill, I am still using the same Gill Pill, the White Tiger that I wrote about a couple weeks ago.  That same gill pill has caught me hundreds of Bluegill, plus an abundance of bass, pike, crappie and perch.  One would think the paint would be wore off but it is not.  I honestly have not changed ice jigs all season yet.  Hopefully it makes it the entire season....ok.....wishful thinking.  Actually, I just ordered a new supply from Custom Jigs and Spins online store which works out slick.  If you are looking for the best ice jigs, you can order them online right here

http://www.customjigsandspins.com/

and they will be at your house in no time.  Trying to find them in a store now is darn near impossible as I found out last week.

How is the ice?  Well, it is getting better fast.  There is about 3 inches of slush on most area lakes that is freezing up slowly.  Yesterday I was able to drive over the top of the slush without breaking through on many lakes.  Three days ago I was just about stuck on all those lakes.  The conditions are improving very fast with these cold temps.  Ice is about 14-16 inches in good spots with many thin areas still.  I heard two trucks went through in the Alexandria area, so proceed with caution.  That is it for now, back again soon with more.