Posted by: Arvid | April 16, 2006

It was Gerry’s Day

With the walleye season now closed for a month, a getting to be popular option is to fish for sturgeon on a catch and release basis. The preferred choice of spots seem to be the deeper channel areas in Four Mile Bay; depths of 20-25 ft. The water clarity has improved considerably and the sturgeon bite has been quite good for the past several days with reports of 10-12 fish per boat for the day being common.

Saturday morning, Gerry and Wally fished for three hours and caught four sturgeon. Gerry caught two; 51 & 53 inches. Wally caught two; neither one big enough to bend the rod. They invited me along to fish the evening and we only caught two sturgeon. Wally caught one about the same size as his morning ones, but Gerry caught one 57 inches that the chart indicates would weigh 45 lbs. I caught a little, I mean small, burbot. Gerry, with three over 50″, definitely had his day.


Gerry with his 57″ Sturgeon

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Posted by: Arvid | April 15, 2006

Camping Weather?

The middle of April is a little early in northern Minnesota to think about camping, but the nice weather we’ve been having gets one in the mood. Our snow is gone; the ice is out of the river and bays and will soon be out of the lake.


April Sunset

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Posted in Weather

Posted by: Arvid | April 4, 2006

Fishing Shutdown

After about 1″ of rain last Thursday and a rapid snow-melt the river got dirty and the fishing went from pretty good to a complete shut down on Friday. Today there is a lot of ice coming down river and I would guess that is from one of the tributaries up river opening up. With only ten days left until the season closes it’s questionable whether the river will clean up enough for fishing to improve.

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Posted by: Arvid | April 4, 2006

Spring Harvest Season

There is nothing like a meal of fresh parsnips from the garden as soon as you can get a fork in the ground to pry them out. We didn’t seem to have as much frost as normal years so the harvest is a little earlier. It’s a good crop and an eight foot row will give us and some friends a few meals.


Digging Parsnips


Spring Parsnips

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Posted in Gardening

Posted by: Arvid | March 30, 2006

River Open in Baudette

It’s a cold rainy day in Baudette. The snow is melting and the water is running. The river ice went out in town night before last and is now pretty well wide open. The boat landings at the airport and Timbermill park should be usable soon. 

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Posted in Fishing

Posted by: Arvid | March 28, 2006

Early Spring Boat Fishing

There is a lot of activity at the boat landings east of Baudette as the river opens up and boat fishermen are getting a few days of fishing before the season closes on April 15th. The river has been wide open at Birchdale and Frontier for a few days and was just opening up at Clementson on Sunday. If you have the patience to wait to launch your boat the reward can be some good fishing. Waiting times at the Birchdale and Frontier landings can be timed in hours and the walk from the boat ramp to your pickup and trailer is best measured in tenths of miles. The only thing short is patience and fuses. Rarely would you find any of the locals up there fighting the crowds. Not that we don’t have the patience. We do; we just wait for the river to open in Baudette.


Open River at Frontier


Frontier Landing


Vidas Landing at Clementson

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Posted by: Arvid | March 15, 2006

Neighbor Jeff to the Rescue

We had a little excitement in the house the other day. A gray squirrel decided to try and find out what was at the bottom of the chimney. Diane heard something in the chimney and we thought it could have been a bird which has happened two or three times in the past, but she said that it sounded like it was bigger than those little birds. She said that we’ll check the cleanout in a day or so and see what’s in there. Well, it didn’t take that long. The next day I went down the basement only to have the squirrel sitting on the floor looking at me. It must have come out the pipe on the gas furnace. I flushed it out of its hiding place and chased it across the room three times hoping that Diane could get a landing net over it, but that didn’t work. So I called neighbor Jeff and he came over with a pellet gun and with one well placed shot we were fortunate to end the disturbance without a mess. Jeff said that it’s breeding season for the squirrels now so they are out and about being quite active. I guess that I’m going to have to put a screen over the chimney to prevent any more of these happenings.

We didn’t get any snow this past weekend, thank goodness. Some of our snow has melted, but we still have snowbanks and with the cool temperatures that are forecasted we’ll have some snowbanks for a while.

There was fishing derby on the Lake last Saturday for the benefit of our golf course that is in dire financial straits. The golf course has a second nine holes that is under construction and from the stories that I hear; anything that could go wrong has. Anyway, about 350 people fished the derby and caught 61 fish. Fish were caught in all of the categories; walleye; sauger, northern; perch; burbot and tulibee. That’s really not too bad for as poor as fishing has been.

Snowbanks on March 15th

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Posted in News

Posted by: Arvid | March 6, 2006

Winter is hanging on

We haven’t had a big snow anytime this winter, but those 1” to 5” every other day sure add up. The snow piles and snow banks are getting quite large.

Forty years ago this past weekend is the anniversary of the March 1966 blizzard that came through the upper Midwest. Some of you were old enough and were around here to remember that storm. Diane and I were living in Bismarck and I was with an associate doing an audit of a grain elevator in Strasburg ND. We left Bismarck on Wednesday morning with no warning that a storm was coming. The storm hit on Wednesday afternoon and lasted until early Saturday morning. When the storm cleared all we could see of Klint’s car was the top six inches of the roof. Strasburg is the hometown of Lawrence Welk and a niece of his was caught and died in the storm. On our way back to Bismarck we saw cattle standing up against fence lines frozen stiff. After wonderful pheasant hunting the fall of ’65 I only saw one rooster pheasant in the fall of ’66. I understand that Baudette received about three feet of snow and that travel was by snowmobile for a day or so. All that snow took its toll on the deer herd that spring. And, as you might have suspected, the elevator audit didn’t get done that week.

The VFW’s annual fishing derby on Baudette Bay was held on Saturday. I have been attending it for as long as we’ve lived here and over the years we’ve been lucky and have had some success; especially when the girls were small. This year there were about 40 fish caught; all pike with the largest 7 lbs. 10 oz. Most were about 2 lbs. I didn’t catch any nor did my name get drawn for any of the prizes.

Baudette Bay on March 2006

Yard Stick – 23 inches under clothesline

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