Heading to Vermilion Friday.

[Red Childress]

Stuff is packed, trip is mapquested and expectations are high for our 18 hour trip to Spring Bay Resort on Lake Vermilion, MN. It will be my second trip to a shield lake but this time we will be casting (not trolling) until our arms stop functioning.

There has been a good nite bite out there so far this month slow-rolling DC-10's while burning DC-8's have been hot during the daytime. We hope to catch fish with other baits and not get locked into a "blade mentality" but one of us will always be chucking blades while the other 2 guys are pulling rubber and jerk/glide baits. I had Rich Newman make me several of his "Surprise Mouth" chop baits in custom MN colors that have been hot out there for the past 2 years.........and he even threw in a newly designed glide bait to test out that does not have a name yet.

I am taking my laptop with me so I can (hopefully) post some big fish pics on a daily basis. I am in serious need of some fun fishing on a different waterway.

Good Luck on the water!

[R Findlan]

Good Luck Red!! I can't wait to read your reports and see some pics of some monsters.
Reed

[toothyfishman]

Take lots of pics to show us, good luck man!

[adudeuknow]

Rich's glide baits are my favorite glide bait. He really got the weighting down pat. They move like no other in my opinion. Love them.

[Larry Jones]

Red,Take along a Red October Twisted Tube 6" Motor Oil with Red Specks!
Good Luck,Can't wait to see the Pix!

Capt. Larry

[Red Childress]

I had problems with my WiFi connection out there and could not post anything until returning home.

The bite was slower than normal out there with lots of high pressure/sun and calm conditions for the first few days. We worked the cabbage beds during the day and sunken reefs during the first 2 evenings with little success. We were losing confidence in our waypoints until we decided to go "old school" and spolight the reefs after we fished them and saw some incredible fish in those exact locations. We just could not get them to eat but gained lots of confidence that we were on the right spots. On day 3 we finally got some good wind and moved from the daytime weedbed stuff to the shallow reefs after talking to a local guide who had just caught 3 fish between 52.5 and 54.5 the week before we got there. He told us that the "reef fish" were generally larger and 2 of our waypoints were where a 58 and 59 were caught over the past 2 years. Since we did not care about catching 4-foot fish but were there to catch the mid-50-inch fish, the rest of our time was spent on the reefs especially those mixed with cabbage.

The last 3 days gave us periods of wind/rain/overcast skies and we started moving HUGE fish on blades, Newmans, Leo's and Warner baits. My buddy from Erie hit a nice 45 on a giant reef just before dark with tornado warnings/damaging hail approaching. A couple of hours after spotlighting and seeing 2 mid-50's fish and another in the 48-inch range all on the same 15x15 boulder nonetheless, we decided to go back to that spot before quitting at 1:30 am. My second cast on the shallowest part of that reef which topped out at 2.5 feet I hooked a BIG fish and after 6 seconds of headshaking, she was gone. That proved to be my first and last chance at a giant cuz she was the only fish I actually connected with the entire week. She ate a DC-13 burned across that very boulder we had spotlighted earlier that Wednesday nite.

Thursday nite must have had a "musky league" going on because all 12 of our "big fish" waypoints had boats camped on them from 7pm until and hour and a half after moonrise. All you could hear was the clanking of big blades across the lake. (Nightfishing on flat/calm/sunny days is a way of life out there on the clear water with a visibility of 7-8 feet.) We raised 2 BIG fish before nightfall but none would even make the first turn on the 8 but would just peel off and slowly sink out of sight. When I say BIG fish, I mean the type of fish that I had never seen before in person. It was simply incredible and exactly what we had driven 1056 miles to see. It was very easy to stay motivated even though we were having a tough time getting them to eat.

Friday evening/night had severe thunderstorms in the forecast so we got geared up and hit the water at 3pm and Charlie immediately raised the largest musky he had ever seen on a newly added waypoint from the night before. (This particular waypoint was on the windswept side of an island reef that we spotlighted the previous nite on our way back to the lodge. We saw a HUGE fish on the shallowest point and 1 more upper-40 to low-50 just 20 feet away) The funny thing about Charlie's fish was that it came in on a "fouled up" Warner bait that was corkscrewing on the retrieve. He was burning it back to the boat while saying a few choice expletives and when he pulled it out of the water (with no figure 8) the fish showed up.......more expletives with a few that I had never heard before. All 3 of us raised BIG fish on Friday during the monsoon and we were the only lodge boat out there the entire evening. We only saw 2 other boats the entire day on Friday.....we did not drive 18 hours to sit at the lodge on our last day especially since we were finally starting to put together a decent program and had been moving huge fish on the previous 3 days.

Next year we will bring our trolling stuff (1 rod per man in MN) and hit the deeper water adjacent to the shallow reefs during the flat/sunny daytime periods and then do the shallow reef program starting at 6pm until 1am while spotlighting a reef or two on the way back to the lodge each nite. Guys do hit daytime fish in the weeds but they are generally smaller fish, which is not appealing to us at all.



Trip notes and quotes:

1) Holy #$%$ did you see size of that fish?? (heard and said that one several times)

2) Can you believe I blew up this brand new Winch in only 3 days??

3) I am not sure if I can burn this DC again cuz my forearms are like jello. (x50)

4) My back is killing me. (x 100)

5) That is the biggest musky I have ever seen! (x 4)

6) Why won't these fish just eat the damn thing??

7) Where did all these boats come from??

8) Where are all the boats today??

9) How close is the lightning now??

10) Why do these guys all stop fishing before midnight??

11) Where is the friggin Deet??

12) How can a fish with a mouth that size miss this tiny little TopRaider??

13) This traffic jam must be from the WhiteSox game.

14) Can you believe how close those guys came in on "our" spot??

15) So this is the "combat" fishing I have been reading about on the message boards.

16) Doesn't anyone ever troll on this lake??

17) I am so glad we decided to come out here and fish. (5 times per day)

18) After seeing the size of the fish in this lake, how can anyone NOT stay motivated??

19) Hey Steve, "Can I just give you next year's deposit before we leave?"

[lowbidder]

Sounds like you had a good time with good friends!

Are those waypoints for sale?? Lol

[Red Childress]

I met a kid who was staying at Spring Bay for the summer named Jake and we talked fishing traded some info and tips while we were there. He had caught 3 fish over 50 just as we were arriving at the resort. Anyway, he just stuck a 57 yesterday and there are some great pics on "another site".

Simply huge and very believable after seeing a fish or (maybe) two in that class while we were there. Jake is swinging a hot bat on some exceptional musky water. He just told me exactly where he caught it a few minutes ago and the funny thing is that we had acquired that exact waypoint (and a dozen more) from Steve (the resort owner) but never ventured there to fish the entire week. It is hard to believe the numbers of big fish there. My brain is really having a tough time comprehending it.

[w pa muskie bound]

red, always trust your guide or resort owner, they know what their doing,thats why their in business. NO pun intended !!! you'll get em next year,on those way points. next year they will be even bigger. were going to chautauqua the next couple of weekends and were going to try what caption larry is doing,hopefully we can cacth a few there,but we'll still try our own style also,just hard to get away from casting......those were really great pics of jakes fish,i like the ones in the water , really shows how nice it really is.

[Red Childress]

We trusted the heck out of him, we just did not inlcude Jake's WPT in our daily milk run because it was too far away from the 8 other big fish WPT's (all of which came from Steve or his dad) that we chose to focus on. Of the places we chose to fish, we hammered those areas at different times and with different baits throughout the day and nite. Jake even gave us confirmation on the location of where he hit those 3 50+ inch fish the weekend we arrived after he saw us fishing there on Wednesday.

We just needed a little cooperation from the fish. No regrets on our gameplan except for the 2-day learning curve since we had never been there before....that is to be expected, I suppose.

[w pa muskie bound]

learning a new lake is a little troublesome,hope we can learn a little fast this weekend up at chautauqua.i understand the problem with a bigger lake,so many places to go and so little time!!!!!