Yearly family gathering is over for another year.
The annual gathering of my father's side is over again for another year. 104 of us from him and his surviving siblings on down gathered at a resort in the Brainerd area for the last full week of July as we have been doing for well more than 40 years, although there were a whole lot fewer of us and we started in the Ottertail area back in the beginning. We kept outgrowing camps or having them sold out from under us. This is the fourth lake we have stayed on since the uncles and aunts joined my parents and have made this week a clan tradition. My father is gone and all of his siblings are now great grand parents, one of them not even married yet when this started to grow. Quite a tradition. One cousin and I with a bit of help from one of my sisters cooked pancakes and eggs for the camp Thursday morning. We did something like 7 or 8 dozen just of the eggs to give some idea of the numbers of us.
Weather was beautiful and the bite was on for most everybody who wanted to fish or swim. Crappies, bluegills and two other sunfish species, rock bass, largemouths, perch walleyes and pike were all taken. No boat was skunked all week long either that I am aware of.
Our sept was only 6 people and three went home a bit early. One had to work and the other two live on the Winnebego reservation in Nebraska and had to get back for Pow Wow. We had just three licenses and we filled them quickly, ate a whole lot of crappies and filled them quick again, ate them up and then again for a total of something like 140 fish in something like only about 40 man hours of fishing. Nearly all the crappies fell in the 9-12" lengths, but my younger sister landed a full 15" one, which we got some pictures of and then she put it back. On this lake, when I run the motor I have what I call a 13" boat rule. That size and larger goes back doing our thing to help maintain the breeding stock. This is the only lake I harvest on and then only for one week out of the middle of summer; so I see nothing wrong with releasing the best fish, while I am there.
For us the ticket was ultralight 4# line and deep jigging 1/32 oz black jig heads and lil hustler inch and a half tubes. Color was important with only a couple of patterns accounting for most of the crappies. By deep I mean as deep as 20'. Holding a boat to allow the little jigs time to get down that deep took some doing, but it paid off mainly for crappies, but we were also able to do that in one mid lake area for perch and a few little walleyes. We kept 4 of the 10 walleyes; the others were just plain too small, and those 4 were barely big enough to fillet as it was. There were also easily 25-30 dink perch at least, none of which we kept. One of the walleyes disgorged a young of the year perch on the cleaning table; so there are definitely year classes of all of them there.
All of our bite was soft, so soft that a lot of our fish were 'just there', especially the crappies with a little up bite, but only one or two good hits all week. My younger sister developed almost a 6th sense about that and she had the hottest hand all week as a result. My brother-in-law didn't have a clue and didn't take many of the crappies either, although he took his share of rockbass, some of them pretty decent for rock bass.
We passed over layers of fish at about 19 or 20' down; so I am guessing that was about where the thermocline was. I watched where there seemed to be exceptional concentrations to jig to, as well as spots I remember from the weeks spent there over the past half a dozen years. Special thanks to whomever mentioned the thermocline last year about this time. It paid dividends for us this year.
Plenty of crappies all around especially as the sun reached the tree tops and started to go down. For this one week out of the year, I get to fish from a boat and drive it, too. I had pretty good luck hovering the boat on the electric or we would never have gotten down that deep with such small baits. Staying in touch with the bottom off drop offs paid the dividends mornings and afternoons. With a lot of the takes on the settle close to the bottom. Only enough movement to stay in touch with the lure was another key - dead slow with very little lateral movement. We did quite a little hunting to find those hover spots, but none of them that produced at all produced only single fish, more likely several including a number of doubles. So some of those spots we worked over pretty good.
We tried for sunnies a couple of times. Finding them was no problem but size was. Nothing beat 8" all week even well off the weedline in deeper water. I took the prize for tiny with a greenie that didn't make two inches on an inch and a half lil hustler.
The 6 of us ate a lot of fish last week, probably 40 or 50, crappies mainly (and sweet corn and fresh tomatoes, and cucumber salad, fried potatoes and both watermelon and cantaloupe). This is one week out of the year that I will harvest, and then we feast on fried fish, which I dearly love, except for the cleaning part which in our families is exclusively men's work.
What we didn't eat were released except for the 6 limits we froze and took home with us. Fishing was mainly low light hours and some afternoons and a couple of short morning outings. There was a lot of napping and dozing in the sun, too; this was vacation after all.
My sister's crappie shared the spot light with an uncle's 26" walleye for best fish of the week. Both were released. A number of cousins' boats also caught some nice largemouths running to at least 4# at times.
Fishing was good, relaxation was good, and now it is over and it is back to normal at home.
The rods are still in the car; so I think I will go fishing this evening.
