I hope you had a nice Valentine’s Day. It may not be an “official” holiday but it is a perfect time to remind your significant other how special they are. If you are anything like me, your wife deserves to know how much her patience and dedication is appreciated. You do not have to spend a lot of money on flowers or heartshaped chocolates to make it a meaningful event.
Living on the Trail we are not subjected to the guiltinducing advertisements from the greeting card companies, so we find other ways to show our affection. Cleaning the house, making a nice dinner, fixing the leaky faucet or just having some alone time together watching a movie is pretty simple and rewarding. I do not know where I would be today if I had never met my wife, but I do know that I am a better person because of her. Alright, enough of the mushy stuff. Let’s talk fishing.
The thermometer has been rising faster than our taxes and the fish are warming up as well. The action on Gunflint, Saganaga, and Sea Gull was pretty good this past weekend and I would expect it will only get better.
The lake trout are a little deeper than before and are actually willing to chase the baits as much as 30 feet away. I have been fishing in 40-60 feet of water with many of my bites coming from about 20 feet below the ice. If you are marking suspended baitfish, than the depth they are suspending at is usually a good place to concentrate your efforts.
Herring and smelt both like to be in the mid-depths a lot of the year, I suppose it gives them more space to escape predators. If they are too close to the surface or the bottom they can be trapped and picked off at will by the lake trout.
The warmer weather has also made hiking much easier since it is packing down the snow on the lakes. Slush has been an issue on many lakes this year, but warm days and cold nights should take care of that problem. The deep snow on top of the lake causes too much insulation and creates a slushy sub-surface. The warmer temperatures we have been experiencing lately will reduce this blanket of insulation and the re-freezing should set up a harder surface. People who have been hiking down to Spam Island in the far Northwest corner of Saganaga are complaining about the difficult walk in the snow, but the good fishing has been worth the trek. I cannot remember a time when they have not been biting at Spam.
This week should be much easier hiking than last week and the forecast looks pretty decent as well.
There was a really nice lake trout caught in Duncan Lake this weekend that was laid out on the bar at Trail Center. I was not able to talk to the angler, but it looked to be somewhere between 18 and 20 pounds. Where else can you go to dinner and check out somebody’s catch from the day laid out on some newspaper? I love that place.
People always tell me the same kinds of stories about the old Windigo as well, but that was before my time up here. My first summer on the Trail was in 1994 and the new Windigo was already a year old. It is unbelievable how fast time travels by. I would have never guessed back then that I would be sitting here writing articles for the paper while feeding my baby, and cooking a Valentine’s dinner for the wife!
My mother-in-law hates it when I call Rachelle “the wife.”
The art of multi-tasking has become a way of life for us. I guess that is just part of growing up. Hope you had a happy Valentine’s Day and good luck on the ice!
Cory Christianson, a graduate of the University of Iowa, has worked as a fishing guide on the Gunflint Trail since 2000. If you have any fishing reports or stories to share, send an email to: christiansoncory@hotmail.com or call 218-388-0315.
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