Source: Pioneer Press, St.自存倉 Paul, Minn.Jan. 11--ON UPPER RED LAKE -- We're four miles from shore, past the last cluster of ice houses, at the end of the ice road, approaching a pressure ridge.But it's not the end of the line for Brad Hawthorne, who's piloting his "Otter Train." The freight cars are three portable ice shelters, and the locomotive is his Polaris 4-wheeler that has tracks instead of wheels."Just out there, there should be some dirty water from this pressure ridge," he says over the drone of the motor, not yet squinting into the approaching sunrise. "And we'll be away from all the activity."The machine surmounts the snowdrifts with ease, and soon we're there: on the edge of a pressure ridge, 100 yards or so away from the nearest sign of human activity.And, as we'll soon confirm, we're sitting above a pile of walleye.The lack of features atop this frozen expanse is matched only by the lack of features below the ice.Upper Red Lake's bottom is primarily a basin, where depth changes of a single foot are noteworthy elements of "structure."Topside, the only landmarks are groups of ice fishing houses, cul-de-sacs planted off the ice roads that, if not kept plowed amid this year's snow, would surely leave even 4x4 owners marooned. The more you look, the more you see. Perhaps 1,000 houses on this weekend.And so it is below the ice, where the real landmarks are clusters -- enormous schools sometimes -- of walleye.The only question is whether the fish will be beneath the houses.The fish, of course, are highly mobile; the houses, much less so.And therein lies the dilemma of fishing Upper Red Lake, which today stands second-to-none among Minnesota's premier walleye factories.Anglers who are wise, determined and able thus move when the fish aren't beneath them."Stay away from people," Jerome Smischney, who runs Alpine Fish House Sleeper Rentals out of JR's resort, had advised me the evening before. A few days before, he had moved all his houses in advance of the weekend crowds.Along with his wife, Diane, Smischney owns Royal Shooks Motel and its affiliated bait shop and garage, the only businesses in the town of Shooks, Minn. Such nobility decades ago earned him the moniker "The Baron of Shooks" from columnist Jim Klobuchar, who, like me and countless other Twin Citians, have laid our heads in the motel and bent the ear of its proprietor.You have to figure that Smischney, 64 and a lifelong resident, knows a thing or two about the lake."I still don't know any of its secrets," he said. "The only thing I do know is stay away from people. If you keep pounding the same area over and over, your chance of being successful is probably a lot less. You gotta be within 6 inches of the bottom, too."On Upper Red, "success" isn't defined as a 10-fish day. Double that and you're in the neighborhood, yet some will shrug at such numbers. A foursome on the lake for a long weekend might scowl at anything shy of 50 fish, or more. So success is in the eye of the beholder.One thing that's not in dispute is that the fish are healthy: yellow and thick. It's easy to find eaters -- all fish 20 to 26 inches must be released -- and it's common to have a few drag-peelers in the slot test your tackle.Recall that 48,000 acres of the eastern portion of Upper Red Lake is open to nontribal members. The remaining 60 percent of Upper Red -- 72,000 acres -- is within the jurisdiction of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians. As is the entirety of Lower Red Lake, which is connected. The combined waters, aka Red Lake, cover 273,280 acres roughly between Bemidji and Baudette. It's often listed as the 16th-largest lake in the United States.Recall that in the 1990s, despite all that acreage and all those walleye, the fish population collapsed from overfishing and poaching.Recall that a massive recovery effort succeeded, and in 2006 the lake was reopened.Recall that it's become no secret that from first safe ice in December through New Year's Day, the fish are generally close to shore, and the bite is outstanding.As always happens when I write about Upper Red this time of year, many out there will recall the accepted "fact" that the bite slows tremendously once January arrives. You're a month late, they'll say. Perhaps.Such declarations had already begun by the first weekend of January. "Last week's cold weather 迷你倉出租lowed it down a lot," grumbled one member of a foursome heading into Rogers Campground and RV Park. They caught their limits, they said, but fell short of the 50-plus days from earlier in the year.Did they move? "Moved the wheelhouse once," the guy said.Another group echoed what appears to be the widely accepted book on the Red bite this year: It's been good, but not as good as last year.One threesome -- Kyle Sacia of Onalaska, Wis., and Zach Warweg and his grown son Dave of Palisade, Minn., estimated they landed 100 fish between Tuesday, Dec. 31, and Saturday, Jan. 4. Last year, they beat that catch rate. Did they move? Several times."I never fish the same spot twice," said Zach Warweg, the senior member of the troupe. "I fish around the spots. I fish areas. That's Red Lake."For Hawthorne, that's the style of fishing he enjoys. From what I saw on our morning together, moving his trio of Otter Trains for clients of PortAvilla ice house rentals, I wouldn't go so far as to call it true "running and gunning." But if you're not on fish, you move. And you stay away from people."We fish zones here, not spots," said Hawthorne, a Mille Lacs guide who relocates to a trailer from December through February to guide here full time. (Yes, he says, the bite continues all winter.) "This lake, the ways these fish are, it suits my style of fishing perfectly." There are a few notable pieces of traditional structure on the lake -- Center Bar always draws a village -- but Hawthorne said he eschews such thinking -- at least if there's much activity there. "We're fishing shallow waters -- often 10 feet or less -- the fish scatter from all that activity if the roads are seeing a lot of activity."You can see the idea catching on. I witnessed several wheelhouse owners hoofing it on foot away from their confines, a short hike into the wind-crusted snow, to set up portables.There is, of course, an opposing philosophy on Upper Red: The fish will move, but they'll move in and they'll move out. And back in. Thus, this logic follows, you might as well be in the cozy comforts of a hard-sided house than bouncing around in portable shelters.To retort that is Chris Freudenberg, owner of PortAvilla. He was sold on frequent moving back when he first fished here from 2002 to 2004. Those were the years when the walleye were gone but monster crappies propped up the fishery, and moving was key. Since PortAvilla set up here in 2005 in advance of the walleye reopening, he's kept track of fishing success for his houses.A clear relationship has developed, he said, between the hard houses and Hawthorne's explorations: Hawthorne fishes low-activity areas, moving his wet-ups until he feels he's got a bead on their locations. (Hawthorne describes "triangulating" "big pods" of walleyes.) A few days later, they move the houses to those spots.Moving the houses always improves the bite, he said, but never -- never -- as good as before the plow trucks cleared the way."People in Brad's shelters consistently catch 50 percent more fish than the hard houses," said Freudenberg, who lives in Forest Lake during the rest of the year.Obviously, this is coming from a guy with a vested interest in this system.All I can say is on a recent morning in January, as the sun peeked above a thin ribbon of conifers on a distant shore, I dropped a spoon tipped with a fathead down one of Hawthorne's holes, and quickly lost count of how many walleye I hooked. It was enough action that when a hook broke on my treble, I figured I'd stick with it. One hook held the bait, so one more hook remained exposed.It should surprise no one that, yes, my percentage of fish hooked-vs.-landed plummeted to around 50 percent. As the sun rose and passed its azimuth, the action slowed, but never stopped. I figure I hooked around two dozen walleye, many on the upper limits of the keeper slot, as well as a pair of hefty yellow perch, one of which was the size of my foot.I left, ahead of the arctic deep freeze, with a bucket of fillets and an unanswered question of when I might see such action again.I call that success.Dave Orrick can be reached at 651-228-5512. Follow him at twitter.com/OutdoorsNow.Copyright: ___ (c)2014 the Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.) Visit the Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.) at .twincities.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉
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