What is it about the last weekend in January for me? Do the stars align in odd form? Like my Unorthodox Laker last year, some strange fishing moments occurred a couple weeks ago. Believe me, there’s definitely no stretch of the imagination with this fisherman’s tale…
Picture the fishing prospects of the Brainerd lakes area. It’s an area that Jake, our buddy Cal, and I know very well. Despite putting 35 rigorous hours on the ice, all to show for the effort was a bunch of cigar ‘eyes (walleyes), a couple eater ‘eyes, a bluegill, a pike, a ton of dinky perch, ciscos, and a bonus bass. Yes, you can say that we caught fish, but our hard work produced minimal results for the dinner table.
A suggestion came from Jake’s corner in the ice house, “How ‘bout we pack up, fill our bellies with a bloody and a half Cajun with a side of andouille at The Wharf (easily the best breakfast and bloody you’ll get up there), and then make our way down to ‘Lacs (Mille Lacs) to hole hop for jumbos this afternoon?”
It was the best idea yet!
With bellies filled, onward we went to the infamous lake known no longer for its walleyes – so much that our state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) made an unprecedented ban on them by closing their open water season six months ago. Thankfully this ban lifted for ice fishing, but, let’s be honest, who would want to target them there when the regulation stipulates that anglers can only keep just ONE between 18 and 20 inches or one larger than 28 inches?
That “eater” 18-20 inch slot is near impossible to achieve; you’re either going to be catching cigars or studs that get to 27 15/16s of an inch. Yes, good luck also getting one over 28 inches.
Clearly we weren’t going for the ‘eyes. It was jumbos or bust!
Hole hopping for jumbos means you make the ice look like swiss cheese. And when you’re making swiss cheese, your drilling quite a spread of holes. And when you’re drilling quite a spread of holes, you may actually pull a first-time ever and go shirtless on a Minnesota Sunday afternoon in January – quite invigorating to say the least, but welcoming considering the sweat you work up.
Anyway, a little cigar walleye and a kicker cisco was all our original spot could muster in an hour; we were marking, but it just wasn’t worth staying around for. It was time to move and drill another swiss cheese spread. Since we only had a couple hours of daylight left, the next spot would be our last. Therefore, I elected to add a little variety by setting out a couple tip ups to see if we could lure in some larger ‘eyes and pike.
“FLAG UP! She’s runnin’!” Jake alerted.
Bail opened. Rod dropped. Boots going like Gonzales.
With reckless abandon, I charged full steam ahead. The grace of a gazelle I lacked – who wouldn’t at a full sprint in clogging boots?? Yet I slid in with time to view the beautiful scene of the tip up’s spool slowly spinning atop; meanwhile, I’m thinking its “Gotta be an ‘eye with how lazy that thing is spinning.”
In standard form, I delicately moved the tip up to the side of the hole so I could just poke my hand down to let out some more line for it to run while I could get the tip up off and out of the way. All went according to plan as I slowly grabbed the line and started to gently pull up until I felt weight.
“YUP!” (as I set the hook while slowly retrieving hand over fist)
Just like the customary fight where it feels like you’re pulling up a dead log while catching ‘eyes in the summer, so was this. Yet I kept plugging away in anticipation. The tip up line transitioned to fluorocarbon. It had to be a walleye, right??
Water pushed up through the hole while making my last couple tugs (when that happens you know you have some size on the other end of the line). “It’s gotta be a 28 incher…”, I figured. The dark water turned to gold below.
“Yeeeep…WOAHHH…”
To my surprise, a bright gold football with black stripes and orange edges began to flop on the ice – a massive jumbo! Avoiding any attention drawn to our apparent successful position to other anglers, I didn’t say anything. Rather, just a casual fist bump to Jake (who was just approaching to check out the catch). Meanwhile, looking over his shoulder, the other flag had popped up.
Off to the races again!
Upon approaching it, this one’s spool wasn’t spinning.
“Bummmer…I suppose I can just check for weight”, I thought to myself. Going at the customary approach as I did before, there was no feeling of weight, so I kept pulling it up to check out my minnow’s condition: stripped off.
There’s a silver lining in that; the two tip ups were positioned on opposite extremes of our hole hopping spread, so there must have been a big school of jumbos that came through. No doubt, though, it’s pretty strange to be catching jumbos on a tip up, but, who’d complain about landing monsters?!
After that ordeal, the first tip up that helped land that massive jumbo turned into a hot hole, getting consistent hits at 15 minute intervals. What wasn’t landed from it, Cal cleaned up on in the surrounding holes; within five minutes of a miss, he’d land a 12-14” ‘eye that’d spit out the minnow I just used on that neighboring tip up – tag teaming at its finest!
I was surprised by the other one, though; considering how quick it was to indicate a strike right after that first monster jumbo hit; it never flipped up again for the rest of the afternoon. Call it strange, but situations like that happen – yet not like how it played out when we were picking up.
As I made my way over to it, Cal spouted, “There could be a fish on…just like how I caught my walleye yesterday that hit the line as I was pulling up.”
I began declining, “Not a chance in hel…WAIT (as I set the hook)…There’s weight on this!”
“HAHA! I told you!!”
“Man, this is heavier than the others.”
In slow, methodical fashion I hand over fisted the line. Water pushed up through the hole again – surely there’s a big girl on the other end….
Nope! It wasn’t that big 27 and 5/16 inch ‘eye I had imagined. Rather, it was one that surely was going to make the slot!
“Yeahhh buddy! (as high fives were given) Grab the tape, Jake!”
“18 on the nuts brotha!”
“Unreal…”
It was unreal. First off, how on earth did that fish not trigger the flag set on the edge of the most sensitive trips of the two that the tip up has? Secondly, out of all the walleyes I’ve caught on Mille Lacs through the years, I have never, I repeat, never caught one in the slot – no matter how generous it has been. The DNR clearly has that slot dialed in. It was a near miracle!
Yet even that ‘eye wasn’t the biggest surprise of our fishing outing.
Rewinding back about twenty minutes earlier, we easily caught a dozen smaller walleyes and a few kicker ciscos on jigs and buckshots tipped with either minnow heads or euro larvae. Where the perch were, no one knew. Regardless, it was still a blast.
Jake had a mark on the bottom that he was teasing for a strike. When he’s marking, he typically asks
“You markin’?”
“Yeah, something biggish…I’ve finessed it off the bottom about 5 times now and it keeps dropping back dow…WOAH!!” (as I set the hook)
“Now we’re talkin’…that’s gotta be a 28” ‘eye you’ve got on!”
So as to not create even more of a scene, I hunkered down with my St. Croix ultra-light rod bent like a U with the 3# line peeling out from my Pfleuger. I thought that my Unorthodox Laker put on the hurt to my rod, but it paled in comparison to what was going on here.
Just as how I played the fight with him, I did so with the beast below my hole: hold on and let him run or, in those slim moments where it wasn’t running, slowly reel in. There’s no room for error when you have a big fish on with an UL set up.
Eventually, an unbelievable wake of water pushed up through the hole. As I slowly brought it up through the 18 inches of ice I anticipated it being a 30+ inch ‘eye, a stud pike, a state record jumbo, a world record cisco, a…..
“You’ve gotta be kidding me?!?!…
…HAHAHA!!!…
…A GIANT SUCKER?!?!?!”
I pinched myself as Cal, huddled around my hole, assisted in trying to pull the thing through.
“I can’t believe it…Out of all things, a freaking sucker?!?!”
Jake just stood there shaking his head – partly in disbelief at what was pulled through the ice but mostly in shame at my exuberance over the matter. He knows me too well; out of all his friends, I’d be the only one excited about this catch, for if I’m the one to get more enthused about shooting a stud bluebill over a mallard in the duck blind, I surely would be the one enjoying this kind of peculiar variety that just so happens to be quite a few inches larger than the trophy length that the MN Hall of Fame stipulates.
And that, my dear reader, is why I wrote this post.
It’s strange to catch a massive jumbo on a tip up. It’s a near miracle to catch a Mille Lacs slot ‘eye on a tip up that somehow didn’t spring the flag. But if the most reputed magazine in the fishing industry (In-Fisherman) could write an article about a sucker’s bottom feeder companion (the elusive carp) entitled “Mission Impossible: Ice Fishing Carp”, then I surely just caught a unicorn.
A bit of a stretch of the imagination? Only for suckers…
