April 7, 2012 
The winter was very mild, little snow and temperatures like most of the Midwest well below historical averages. Ice went out around April 1st. This provides a great opportunity for all the resorts with an extra two to three weeks to get ready for the season. Our main project/upgrade this Winter was a renovation to ‘Sundown’ cabin. 
We have expanded the cabin using the screen porch providing a larger kitchen, a second bath, some new windows to increase the view, renovated the original bath, new flooring, a forced air furnace system, new siding, and provisions to add a washer/dryer. We are also in the process to doing some renovations to ‘Aerie’ ( our six bedroom next to the Dam) but I won’t mention what we are doing for we have some long time repeat guests that love that cabin and over the years provided some suggested changes..so we want to surprise them when they come up.
We have added another Fish and Ski boat to the Rental fleet this year ( 18 ft Crestliner , 150 hp). Water levels are lower than normal but nothing to be over concerned about at this point. Our hope is we will get enough rain in April ( raining as I write this) to bring the water levels to normal. Using the main docks as a gauge I would say the water levels are about 1 ft lower than normal for this time of the year.
Normal lake level for ice out ..water is touching fire hose on dock
We are booked up heavy for the summer but still have some prime spots in mid June open. Our local DNR Fishery report indicates a good year for overall fishing. The report noted that the Far West End will continue to experience larger sized slot fish being predominate. This was determined by 2011 survey/sample gill netting. The East end of the lake is indicating high numbers of walleye per sample and more fish outside of the slot. In response to number of larger slot fish..The DNR has adjusted the slot this year to increase the allowable harvest size to 18 inches…so the new walleye slot is 18-26 vs 17-26 . The DNR Report also indicated healthy numbers of 2006/07 year class fish 13-17inches Walleye in Niles Bay area that should be good news for all our guests that like to fish close to the resort.
Something new for 2012 we are hosting a Fall Walleye School Sept 20-23rd. We feel very fortunate to be able to bring in two Top Walleye Fishing Professionals to teach the class. One is Bruce Samson ( Doc Sonar) and the other Johnnie Candle . Both Teach classes in the winter months around the Midwest. Johnnie teaches a class called the ‘Walleye University’ for Scheels sporting goods retail stores. . Johnnie Teaches new techniques in both live bait and artificial fishing. Bruce is a retired medical doctor who like Johnnie has won many national Walleye fishing titles in the tournament circuits. His specialty is teaching people how use their marine electronics. He said many people have huge investments in their boat electronics but don’t know how to use them to their full potential.( I would be testimonial of that) For the class he will combine classroom with on the water instruction to teach mapping, interpretation of stucture and simply how to approach any body of water using Electronics to map the best possible places to fish. I attended the Minneapolis Sport Show last week and had a lot of people at our booth already signing up for this class . I also received feedback from several people that took either Doc Samson or Johnnie’s classes and all reported they are excellent teachers and people attending will be amazed at how much they will get out of their course. Both Johnnie and Doc fish together and have combined classes but this is the first time they are doing a class on a lake that combines blocks of classroom with on the water fishing. We have a total of 40 slots as of today we have 18 slots already filled. The course runs thursday to Sunday afternoon all meals and lodging are included in the package . If you are interested in more info or signing up here is the link :
http://www.vdl.com/fallwalleyeschool.html
We are looking forward to a great year and look forward to seeing all the returning guests and new guests . Wishing everyone reading this a great Easter with your families.
