OUTDOOR Tales and Trails

BY DAVE BECK

We are officially in the dog days of winter. While the sting of the cold white weather is still with us, the days are getting longer. When we get those small windows of tolerable weather, it’s not time to cut bait, it’s time to fish. For me that means hitting up some walleyes down on the river near Red Wing.

My net man for a recent walleye outing was Max, a long-time crony. The list of cold weather net men is a little shorter than the summer crew. I hold no grudges either way because if I had my choice, throwing summer lures beats the heck out of throwing winter walleye jigs. This is why Max is a such a good choice: he’ll pick fishing for walleyes over the weather all winter long.

The day we picked to go fishing was cool but without wind making the 25 degrees seem a little balmy. It wasn’t sunscreen weather or anything like that, but it was comfortable and more importantly, fishable.

When it comes to winter walleye fishing there’s not a lot of prospecting. Even in fishable conditions, the goal is always to get in and out before that wind turns on or the temperature dives. For both those reasons, when I make a winter walleye run, I’m looking to hit up spots that I have a history with. I’ll admit that it used to be more about catching a monster to hang on the wall, but nowadays I’m looking to bag enough for a couple of tasty fish fries. I’m not sure if that’s me maturing as an angler or just me really liking my secret beer batter recipe.

So how did we do? Well, the first spot was a bust. The only thing we caught were a couple of snags but we managed to break off our line so it could have been worse. Actually, Max did catch a 20-incher. That is the good news. The bad news is that it was a sucker. Say what you will about suckers, but I didn’t see anyone else down there catching them. That fact alone put Max in first place: Sucker Division. A point that Max himself made.

The second spot got us on the walleye board with a 21-incher. No matter what happened the rest of the day, I had what I needed for my fish fry. A second fish measuring 19 inches had Max covered as well. We accomplished our goal but decided that a few more fish couldn’t hurt.

After those two fish we cooled off and were forced to move around a little. Staying in a spot too long is a fault that most walleye anglers make. We eventually slipped in and out of several spots before finally landing on some fish: saugers. They are the smaller cousin to the walleye, but just as good to eat. To make a longer story shorter, Max landed four saugers, filling out his limit, and I caught one, leaving us one fish short of our legal limit.

Before we could land that last fish, the wind picked up and being comfortable quickly came to an end and so did our outing. We headed for home with our fish and our pride intact. Plus, one of now has the reputation of being a world class angler: Sucker Division.

Didn’t get enough Dave this week? Visit “Outdoor Trails and Tales with Dave Beck” on Facebook for photos and video of Dave’s adventures. You can share your own photos and video with him there as well, or by emailing him at [email protected] Also, check out OTT content on Instagram @ thepiercecountyjournal