September 26,2011,
Fall colors are a week away from hitting the peak. This last week has been beautiful. We have had a couple of nights of frost leaving a fog on the water until the suns burns it off ..then the days warm up into the sixties with no bugs, just plain gorgeous.
Small game season has started. Grouse numbers are up this year and the grouse hunters that have been coming up have had good success. Also Duck Season has started off Good. Alex ( who works at the resort on the dock) and a friend had good success over the weekend hunting a flooded area just east of the Resort.
Water temps as of today were 61 degrees. Walleye are starting to show up in their usual deeper fall spots..Altough there is still a lot actitivity off the shallow weed lines. Most of the guides have switched to minnows as the primary Live bait..but crawlers are still working if used on spinner. Musky action has not taken off yet but as the water temps drop we expect it start improving anyday . Our tenth annual Fall Musky Outing starts Oct 13th..we already have about 30 people signed up and expecting a few more. This year we have a great line up of top guides and expecting some great fish being caught. Bass fishing has remained consistent all season..with both smallmouth and largemouth still up hitting in shallow water. Smallmouth season is now closed but many are still getting caught and released when fishing for other species? We have not seen our usual fall crappie action start .. every year we have guests catching limits of crappie from a spot we call the deep hole near Niles Bay. That structure has Crappie move in on it around Labor Day and the fish seem to stay there throughout The winter.
One the best stories of the year is the monster Musky lurking below the Dam. Throughout the summer guests that would walk down to the dock below the resort To fish for panfish, Northern ,bass and walleye kept coming back with stories of a huge musky coming up and eating their hooked panfish, or bass…some reports the fish was 55-58 inches. There has always been musky below the Dam and not uncommon for a guest to catch one pushing 50 inches with only one over 50 inches caught a few years back. Most of the musky caught below the Dam were usually are not heavy in the body for they rely on a low protein diet to survive vs musky on Vermilion that can eat Whitefish and Cisco. In August a fisherman from Brainerd Mn, ( Damien Williams) Came up with his family. Damien is a serious musky fisherman who fishes the Brainerd Lakes all the time. One evening he took his daughter down below the Dam to fish for Pike and ended up catching a 47 inch musky.
When he told us about his catch he also shared that he seen the big musky everyone was talking about…knowing his experience in catching muskies he would be a good judge of size….so we asked him honestly how big that fish was down there…he responded “ its big..real Big..I would guess around 55 inches” Marty was standing there listening to the story .… when he heard how big the fish was estimated at..he told me he had to go down there and check it out. We both were shocked to hear we could have fish that big living in that small section of the river. Three days later Marty caught the fish..it was just short of 55 inches but had very thick body. Marty estimates the fish around 40 pounds. All I can figure is that fish came over the dam in spring and took up residence right below the falls for it was great source of food and oxygen in the current. Its unlikely that fish has always been there and got that big feeding off the Panfish and bass in the pool below the rapids. The good news is he released it right away after measuring it so next year the monster will still be there unless it moves north into the larger stretch of the river. 
Looking forward to the start of a great fall period. We have a lot of fisherman already booked to come up for some short stays throughout the month in addition to some families coming up for the Minnesota MAE weekend ( kids are out of school for four days).
