We all have those days, Right?

Since the last entry I have been busy, busy, busy. Seems I have only had time to get out about 4 times in the last month. With it being as warm as it was a few weeks back I was finding fish and they were hungry, Anything that was blue/chartreuse was lights out. The following few weeks lead to a cold snap and rainy conditions. Which pushed the fish back out deep and eliminated about 80 percent of my shore spots.

Last week a buddy picked up a new boat and asked me to come along for its maiden voyage. We agreed to meet up and hit the water in the late morning. We started off trying to duck away from the wind but ended up just tolling the shoreline and fan casting jigs and plastics. Within a few cast's it was fish on, a 9-10" Largemouth, Out of season....lol I think I caught another 3 and we decided to move. We ended up hitting another area on the lake which is a shallow bowl between the upper and lower portion. Again we set up to fan cast and troll, first fish Was to my buddy, a small Pike that snapped him off right at the boat. Next up it was me with another bass. This was the story for the next two hours before we called it quits.

I should have some free time this weekend to get out and about and try to get some footage. It looks like cold weather and rain the next day or two then another warm up so we will see what happens.

I want to take a moment to mention the jig and plastic I have been using. The 1/16th oz Lindy Watsit has been providing good action for me so far, although it is a fairly Large bait I have been able to catch some nice sunfish and crappie on it. When they do reject it I have been switching to 1/64th - 1/80th home tied hair jigs in blue/chart which are also working great on those finesse days.

Walleye opener is just around the corner! Tight lines!

Ek

 Well My quarter at school is over so I have some free time. Been working on some rods lately so I thought I would put up some pictures. The first one is a test rod that is mostly leftovers that I wanted to try some new rod wrapping techniques along with adding decals to the rods. So far I like it I think the white blanks will make the decals easy to see and gives each rod that unique look.













The second set of rods are a set of 32" walleye rods, built on solid carbon blanks. They have 5" cork handles and are wrapped in stock colors. Nothing new with these but I thought they looked really nice. They will have Seymo "stand - off" single foot fly guides which should give them a unique touch.

the Seymo guides are very unique and are set off the blank just a hair. They are a great option when trying to keep things light weight.



Till next time, Tight lines!

EK

Lack of sleep, and slow fishing lol

Well, Finally had some time to sit down and write an entry, Last week of the quarter for school then a nice three week break, The ice is melting and open water gear is getting dug out, and spring time BBQ and exercising is starting.

New PB 26"eye

About a week and a half ago I made the trek up to wonderful Lake of the Woods in the northcountry of Minnesota with a few new friends. Im a frequent visitor of the minnesota forums including Fishingminnesota.com and Lakestatefishing.com. Lake State has a chat room that gets hopping some nights and it was there that I met Matt Lardinois, through chatting with him for about a month we decided that it would fun to make a late season trip up so I could see what the hype was all about. We left the metro at about 9:30 Pm and drove all night making a stop at another member of the groups "cottage" for a few hours, then continued the drive to Baudette. If I remember right we pulled in about 5:30 Am. We hit the tackle shop and got some breakfast getting out onto the lake at 7:00 am or so.
After getting settled in we started fishing, right away I pulled up two small eyes, one on each line and thought to myself "this is gonna be awesome". Shortly after it slowed way down lol. We got into a mess of tullibee after that and spent the rest of the afternoon catching fish in flurries and BS'ing about the finer things in life. Later in the after noon I hooked into my new PB pike which came in a hair short of 30", followed a few fish later by a new PB eye which was 26". That was the highlight of day one for me, seeing Casey go shoulder deep in the ice cold water to make sure I landed the fish. Thanks bud!
After dark it was supper consisting of fresh caught fish then sleep. Waking up in the morning I set a deadstick down only to hook into a nice 23" eye for the first fish of the day. Casey was still in bed so His dad helped me land this brute! after that the wind picked up and the tullibees moved back in. We left around 4PM and headed back stopping to get malts at a small town gas station and then finishing the drive. I pulled in my driveway shorty before midnight and unpacked.
All in all this was one of the best fishing trips I have ever had regardless if it was "slow". Thanks for the invite Matt and I hope to get out again soon with ya!
Now whats new in the shop? Sent out a couple laker rods to a Northern MN guide and Photographer last week, as well as started some new "Walleye" rods for myself. Hopefully with this break I have coming I can get some stuff organized after the winter and everything being thrown around the table.

Ive also started shooting some video, as well as started dieting and exercising so I look forward to reporting my story of how that goes! Tight lines and good times!

EK

03/02/12 Late Ice already

 Well, Late ice is upon us already, what a short year it was. Not much going on with me lately, havent been out in a week, weve had a ton of crazy weather and Ive been waiting for it to level out a bit. But, with temps in the 50's locally next week, it might be over down here. On the positive side, I will be heading up to Lake of the Woods on the 6th, for some late season walleyes, and hopefully some bonus fish.
Been stockpiling new gear to try out up there as well, First of which is the Humminbird Ice 55, I was able to sell my Fl22 for about the same price I paid for it and decided I would give the bird 55 a try along side the LX7. So far it seems like a solid unit and from what I have seen of them from fellow fisherman it will do everything I want it to!

Should have more info on it after I get back from the big lake next week.
Next up is something I think is very cool and will help with the blog as well as promotions. I picked up a Gopro hero Hd action sports camera. Pair this up with the other cams I have and its never ending mounting options and I should be able to get some good fishing and hunting videos. I cant wait to get this thing on the water and put it through the paces. The time lapse feature is one that I think I will use a ton.

Well thats just a "whats new" from me for the time being hopefully we get a few more weeks of ice but the way the weather is.....

Tight Lines!

Here is a short video featuring some of the updated features....

New toy 02/08/12

So those of you that know me, Know that last year I picked up a Marcum Lx5. From the hype that it received I thought it would be the perfect upgrade from my old but trusty Vexilar FL8. As soon as I got it home I took it out fishing only to find that it suffered from what was called "screen shifting" or in other words an uncalibrated motor.
After numerous emails and no reply and about 12 phone calls before I got an answer they told me I could either mail it in and wait up to three weeks for it to be fixed, or bring it in and drop it off with the same turn around. I wasnt happy.

I took the unit back to the retailer and switched it for a Vexilar Fl22 and had a great rest of the year with an awesome unit!

Now fast forward to September when I posted the entry about the LX7 from the thorne bros Portable mod GTG. Right away I was intrigued by the unit and spent a good amount of time ogling it. I did however had doubts due to the rough start I had with Marcum. Well after hearing about a few of the issues the original release units had with jumpy bottoms, inaccurate depth readings and no dynamic depth as originally promised. Of course I sat on the ice staring at my Vexilar smirking.....About a week ago I stumbled onto a forum that was boasting the v2.9 software upgrade that was available for them. Well After reading up on the update and seeing a few videos about it I decided to take a leap of faith and sell one of my Vexilars to pick up the LX7.

Monday I picked up my unit from a buddy and got home and played with it for a few hours in the kitchen Its so adjustable its almost too easy to make it what you want it to be. Tuesday Night I got out on some local water and was able to get it wet. All I can say is AMAZING.....the target id, and dynamic depth are the best features I found, but being able to run a full flasher dial with no dead space, an open water graphing mode, and a zoom window all in one on the 8 inch screen gives me an all around field of view of what the fish are doing below me.

IF you havent checked out a post upgrade LX7. I suggest you do.

Panfish Frenzy...1/28/12

Got out to a local lake Saturday morning with My buddies, Chris, and Adam. We got out early and got set up on a mid lake flat with a break to shallow water near. Right away we started snapping fish but they were all smaller than we were looking for. After about a half hour Chris and I took out some aggression on the lake with our augers and found fish up shallower in about 23'.







Chris kept drilling some more and I found a hole and hunkered down. Right away I found more bluegills but again small fish. After about ten minutes Chris started checking the fresh holes and was marking fish. within minutes he shouted over for me to open my shack door. He was holding a gill that was about 7-8" and said he was marking more. He went to grab Adam and his Otter while I hopped around a bit more. I finally set up about 10 feet behind them in my scout and went to work. First fish out of the hole was a decent 10" crappie. For the next two hours it was non stop action.  Chris got on the board right away as well with a nice little bass that put up a good fight.
Between 12 and 1 we did encounter a Lull it was as they just werent hungry anymore.

Now onto some other fun stuff, Ive been busy in the rod shop building some pretty cool fun rods one of which was a Red, White, and Blue rod that I built for a former classmate.  This rod was alot of fun to build just for the fact that it was something different from the solid Blues, and Blacks that I normally get requests for lol.

I also did some testing on a Prototype blank that I hope to make available next winter as a Production rod. I was able to test it out on the ice saturday and liked how it felt. I look forward to getting more time with it and working out all the kinks!

Until later, Tight lines. Looks like we have a warm up coming and everyone needs to slow down and be safe out there!