Single Speck

This bullhead is the only fish that bit for me tonight.

I arrived at the GOMH around 6:30PM and there were 3 people on the SE side, someone on the NE side and only one guy on the SW corner, so I quickly moved in next to him. CO Kuske was also there when I arrived. The guy next to me had a silver bullhead in the bucket and he got one more before he left at about 7PM. The people on the SE side got nothing.

Conditions were overcast and breezy out of the NE. The wind was cool but not cold.

Lantern Man showed up at about 8:20PM and took up on the SE side. As I was leaving at 8:45PM he had a 3lb-ish dogfish break him off.

No Skunk For Me...

I thought for sure I was getting a skunk for the day. No activity at the GOMH and a wind from the wrong direction and no Rock Dock to fish from. Still I put my time in and fished all afternoon. I started out by checking for suckers, there weren't any. Then I headed to the GOMH as the sun was out, and it was warm but windy out of the NE, which actually was a good direction for the south side of the GOMH. CO Kuske stopped by again. He said crappies were being caught at Pierz as of today. I fished for about an hour, then headed to Rock. After seeing the futility of fishing Rock in that NE wind, I sat in the truck and listened to the radio, hoping the dock installers would show up. While I was sitting there, a guy who I might have met before came down in an ATV to go fishing. He gave me some interesting information, but he did not catch anything. It may have been info about suckers running. After that guy left, I went back out to try again, and while I was fishing, a boat came down to launch, so I got in the truck to move out of the way. I parked in the lot, and one of the guys with the boat motioned for me to roll down the window. He let me know my left back tire was just about flat. The tire wasn't totally flat, so I made the decision to limp the truck about 3 miles to Bear Traxx hardware and gas. I made it with no problems and got the tire filled back up. I could hear the leak, so I immediately drove 5 miles south to J&D's, which is a full service station. In 30 minutes Jeff had the tire patched and I was back on the road. Our place is less than a mile South of J & D's, so I headed home to check on the dogs and get them their supper. Once that business was done, I headed back to Rock. Nobody was there so I pulled up to the ramp and started fishing. The wind was just a bit better but had clouded up pretty well. I think I missed one bite but am not totally sure. I finally bugged out at 6:30PM. I was surprised when I arrived at the GOMH that nobody was there, which was not a particularly good sign. As I took my stuff down to the SW side, Grumpy Old Man Willard showed up. He gave me a hard time about how he would catch as many fish as me by just sitting in his truck.

Right around 7:30PM, Willard left, and I started seeing signs that some baitfish were around with predators chasing them. I made several casts to the area but didn't have any bites. It was getting pretty dark, and I was reeling in by some cattail stalks when I thought I was hung up, but the snag started moving quickly to my left. Sure enough I had a bullhead. I lifted him out of the water and before I could grab him my line snapped, but he was well over the shore so I picked him up.
As you can see in the picture, it was a male pike that was milting.

I didn't get skunked, the GOMH comes through again.

Wide Open!!!

Wide open is the description of all the lakes I looked at today except Mille Lacs. Shakopee open, Bulldog open, Rock open, and yes even Sullivan open.

My day started out with a trip to Onamia to pick up meds and check to see if the suckers were running in the Rum River just North of Shakopee Lake. Do you see any suckers in this picture:

If you do your eye sight is better than mine. The river was empty, therefore sucker fishing was out. I went to Subway for lunch and came back, still no sign of suckers. I hung out for about an hour and no suckers so I headed home.

I got out to the GOMH around 2PM and there was no bullhead action. So next I headed over to check out Bulldog then to the Rock Lake public access. No surprise the Rock Dock was not in the water yet, maybe tomorrow. The Rock access has been known to cough out fish even before the ice gets off the lake, so that is where I set up for the afternoon. Unfortunately for the fishing it was overcast and hazy for most of the afternoon keeping the shallows from heating up. The sky's started to clear a bit around 4:30 and sure enough my bobber went down and I caught my first open water fish of the year.
It went 17 inches.

A little bit later the sky's cleared up and a small school of little bass, a few sunfish, and a couple of crappies swam right up to me and then just as soon as they were there were gone. Didn't even get a bite. A little while later the bobber went down and my lure went bye bye. Stupid Pike!!! I fished until after 7 and occasionally there were sign's of fish swimming around, but I couldn't get any more bites.

I headed to the GOMH and Willard was sitting in his mini van and a guy, lady, and kid were fishing off the bridge and on the SW side. Willard informed me they had not caught anything and were fishing with minnows. I talked to Willard for about 15 minutes then headed over to the SE side which was open. While I was fishing CO Kuske and another CO showed up and did a fishing licence check. As the CO's were leaving I swear I got a bite on my drop shot power minnow but it got off right away. Felt like a silver bullhead. That was it for action at the GOMH tonight.

Opener Eve

The Opener

In the state of Minnesocold the gamefish species (walleye, Pike, Bass, Trout) all have seasons in which they are closed for fishing. The 2nd weekend in May is the traditional "Minnesota Fishing Opener" for Walleye, the state fish, and Northern Pike; Bass don't open until Memorial Day weekend. Being that this is the 2nd week of May, it is the week of "the Opener." "The Opener" week is for many a time of hightened excitement in preparation for angling the preferred species in MN...

This year for Opener once again I will be hitting the Eddy's Jetti at midnight, which I have done for at least the previous 2 Openers. Last year sucked, the year before I caught my limit in an hour and a half. The wind isn't ideal and so I am not that optimistic. Maybe the higher water levels will bail me out. It is supposed to be cool with possible precipitation at midnight with N to NW winds. Some wind is better than no wind, but as we learned 2 years ago a SE wind is best.

I also plan to hit the GOMH tomorrow morning for a little pike try.

Opener Eve @ GOMH: Tonight I hit the GOMH from 7:20PM till dark. It looks as if the silver bullheads have disappeared as I didn't see a single one caught, although there were not a whole lot of fishermen and just a few boats. Conservation Officer Kuske stopped by and told me he has seen some nice golden bullheads caught at the channel at night after the Opener.

As for myself, all I could catch was small jumpin bullheads. I used the 1/16oz Panfish Chatterbait and 1/8oz Storm Wildeye Swimbait. There was a little girl fishing that caught a 3lb+ jumpin bullhead.

Happy Birthday Pete GOMH Report

This report covers fishing for the last 2 days. My fishing buddy Pete Kimmer is in the Minnesota National Guard and he asked us to watch his dog Sandie this past weekend for his drill at Fort Ripley. Pete has been staying at the house since Sunday. Last night we headed over to the Grumpy Old Man Hole around 5:30PM and discovered a pretty good crowd fishing at the bridge on the SW and SE side. GOM Lee Ander was there and he was fishing over the rail in the middle of the bridge and Lee Anders brother, GOM Lewis was there as well but as usual he wasn't fishing. Willard was intently fishing on the SE side and I didn't talk to him. There was room to fish on the SE side but we didn't see a whole lot going on and Pete wanted to see if Don Weinmeister wanted to possibly go out, so we went to Don's house. We talked with Don for awhile before he had to go to Bible study at 7PM and he let us use his dock for fishing.

It was a nice peaceful night to be out but we didn't have any luck on the dock, so around 8:30PM we headed for the GOMH. When we arrived there was only 1 truck remaining with a guy and his kid fishing on the SW side. Pete caught a little silver bullhead and I missed one and that was it. While we were there a guy showed up and said he and his wife smacked em good earlier in the day and he was down checking to see if a guy who was a jerk to him in the morning was back at night for a little "double dipping." The guys he was looking for weren't there.

Double dipping is when an angler catches their legal limit goes home and then comes back to catch another limit, which is illegal to do in Minnesota because you can by law only possess 1 legal limit of most fish in Minnesota.


After not being able to get to sleep for most of the night it was a little before 6AM this morning when Pete woke me up out of a crazy dream and tried to get me up to go see if we could get a morning bite. He said if we didn't get them we could always come right back and the logic of that thought seeped into my sleep deprived brain and I actually got up.

We were at the GOMH by 7AM and there were about 4 people on the SE side and 2 people on the SW side. We took the SW side. The people who had got there early said the bite had been pretty good but had slowed a bit. Pete landed a jumpin bullhead almost right away and the guys with us on the SW side were catching an occasional silver bullhead. After 1/2 and hour to 45 minutes the guys next to us ran out of minnows and 1 of the guys filled out his limit so they left which gave us command of the SW side and seemingly put us in better position to fish the area's that bullheads had been coming from.

(Pete on the SW side)

I don't remember who caught the first fish but I caught a couple of very nice silver bullheads and Pete caught a couple of orange bullheads which we kept. We were going through various degrees of overcast and I got a hot hand on the silvers for a while. They were taking minnows, alive or dead, on the orange Flu Flu. Eventually things cooled down for me and Pete got hot. There was a shuffling of the people fishing at the GOMH and I ended up giving away a couple of silver bullheads that were not up to my minimum keeper standards. I gave Pete a hard time about how big the fish had to be before I would clean them.

It must have been sometime after 10AM when I went up to the truck to relax. The fish were biting slow but steady when I went to the truck. While I was relaxing Conservation Officer Kuske stopped by. Apparently he had received reports that people were double dipping and he was looking for info, but I don't think I was of much help because I didn't have any clue who might have been dipping or not. Everyone we met that morning seemed to be on the level as far as I could tell. CO Kuske told me what he knew about the remaining changes the GOMH bridge will go under. He said he was quite disappointed that they did not dredge the channel like he thought he was going to get them to do.

CO Kuske also asked if I was "the guy with the website" and I told him I was, but I didn't ask him why he asked or if his interest was a good thing. I have a sneaking suspicion that an individual or two who holds a grudge against me has reported that the area CO should specifically be on the lookout for me and all that BS. If I wasn't so tired maybe I would have thought to enquire. Anyway, Kuske checked my license and off he went. I wish I would have also asked him about the lack of Walleye Stamp designation on my license.

Sometime before Kuske arrived a boat moved in on where Pete and a guy on the SE side were casting. Pete had a few words with the guy and eventually dubbed the boat driver "Ricky Bobby" as the boater made a few inexplicable moves in positioning and re-positioning the boat.

Any way as it turned out Pete started really whacking the fish. I did join him for a little while but tired of the challenging casting conditions fairly quickly. Some more people joined the Pete GOMH shore party and it started to sprinkle and then rain. Pete was catching fish like a mad man and was in a generous mood giving quite a few silvers away. We left around 2PM when it was really coming down at a pretty good clip. We passed GOM Willard on his way to the GOMH when we were on the way home.

All told we kept 16 silver bullheads and 2 orange bullheads

Pete estimated he caught over 60 bullheads and we both could have filled those final 4 slots from fish we released. I think the smallest fish was about 9.5" with pretty much all the rest being 10"-12".

We cleaned the fish and ate them up at a special birthday dinner for Pete who turned 40 yesterday. Jenny Olson came and had dinner with us as she loves her fish.