Dano's Tree Service - Senior Picture 2014

Every year the tree service gets bigger and bigger.  And every year we take a sweet senior pic  (see below).  We added this awesome garage on a five acre lot located technically in Boulder Junction, on the intersection of Bakken Rd and Hwy 51.  Also acquired the pictured skid steer, which dominates logs, enabling us to be much more efficient on most job sites.  Also, aspiring lumberjack Jason Kingstad, has taken up an apprenticeship with us.   

Spots

Any E. Lucius around that 40 inch range south of Canada is a quality fish.  Here's an example.

Row Trolling

Row trolling is hands down the best method for targeting big pelagic muskies.  Pictured above are a couple of nice specimens from earlier in the summer this year.  Some of the biggest muskies ever caught in Northern Wisconsin were slayed while using this method.  Both of these fish came in 50' of water and were roaming under pods of ciscoes.  Most anglers immediatly assume that deep diving crankbaits are the best lures for this type of fishing, but both these fish were caught on big rubber. 

42 lbs, 51.5" - The Footage

Client Musk

Had a client nail a nice 38" muskie about five casts into his trip.  Needless to say, catching a muskie that fast rarely happends.  He also had opportunities at a pair of mid-40s inch fish within the next hour. 



Walleye Guide Trip

Had a group up that just wanted to catch a bounty of fish, something they could bring back and have a fish fry with.  I guided two boats on a half day trip and totalled over 35 walleyes, with six nice keepers.  Also plenty of bonus panfish and a few heavy smallmouth bass.  Needless to say, they got their money's worth and then some.  

An Absolute Giant Muskie - 51.5" 42 lbs

I was fortunate enough to slay my biggest fish ever on 8-17-2014. With my dog as my lone companion on that night, the fish hit hard just before dark and durng a moon event. After I laced a strong hook set, she revieled herself, violently trying to toss the lure with two sets of agressive above-water head shakes. She stayed pinned and I burried my rod. I turned her once on the right side of the boat, then she powered down hard to the left side of the boat, when I then turned her again back toward the bow. I noticed she was spent and I grabbed my net and scooped her into the bag as steadily as I could. I was truely in disbelief when I starred down at her. I took a measurement and snapped a couple pictures. I tried my best for 45 minutes to revive this laviathon, but she simply would not go. I had no choice but to face the reality that this fish was coming home with me. As a result, I was able to get every possible measurement varified by another guide in the area. I have awesome video of this fish from two different angles, and holding this thing in the boat with the cameras rolling reveales its true size. The stats go.... 51.5 " 25.5" girth 42 pounds 11.5" caudal peduncle. The fish will be one of the biggest fish caught inland in WI this year.

Happy Easter

Slid down to the Wausau area Saturday to scout birds at my land.  Crushed this one early the next morning, Easter morning.  A healthy specimen indeed.

Ertl likes the cyclops crop a lops

Fellow Northwoods enthusiast, Mr Joe Ertl, seldom gets out of the Cities, and even more seldom during peak crappie time.  However, he recently found himself in this predicament, with a full week off of work, and crappies on his brain.  We had a solid four days of slaying, despite having to tough-out the last major storm of the winter which consisted of complete whiteout sideways snow and 14" of accumulation.

Why Fish Become More Active in Spring

It’s a love/hate thing, I love active fish and they hate me.  Springtime!  It’s the perfect storm of processes.  A time of year when plant life eagerly and strategically take advantage of  the much extended photoperiod and begin to photosynthesize exponentially more; in turn,  manufacturing excellent conditions for all things living, especially fish, and even more especially, anglers.

Let’s look at why fish activity increases greatly this time of year.  I’m going to keep this simple, because nobody likes confusion.  Photoperiod, temperature, nutrients, insects, and oxygen all increase this time of year, and together conform the impetus to which fish benefit immensely.

Photoperiod, the quantity of daylight in a given day, is perhaps the most influential player in the cycle of increased spring synergy.  The increased amount of daylight increases the air temperature and begins to melt the snow and ice, transitioning an opaque ice sheet to an eventual translucent one.  The sunlight is then able to penetrate the ice and reach aquatic plants, providing the catalyst for photosynthesis.  Photosynthesis converts sunlight into chemical energy that is used by all organisms.  This energy is a combination of sugars and oxygen.

With the influx of oxygen to a previously oxygen-low environment, aquatic insects suddenly begin to benefit positively and thrive from the increased nutrient loading provided by the newly churning fresh water.  Cracks and holes in the ice, shoreline breakup, and snowmelt all increase water flow which dumps essential nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus into the newly emerged aquatic insects’ environment, and into their bodies, producing a lively scene.

You guessed it.  Fish will naturally migrate towards these newly oxygen/insect-rich areas (inlets, shallow water, weed beds) and be handsomely rewarded with calories required to induce reproductive growth and processes.  Fish now feed intensely, and experienced ice-anglers always know to take advantage of this narrow window before putting their jig-rods and flashers down for the year.

Walter

This is Walter.  He is a pure bred English Lab.  He shows an uncanny ability to burry scores of bones, then find them months later.  He will do the same thing with your gloves, watch out.

Bull Humpbacks

After walleye season shuts down for the year, it's typically time to explore all the smaller centarchid lakes that have been in the back of my mind all winter- in search of mondo gillz.  I like to hit lakes that I've never fished before.  They usually are under 200 acres and are loaded with largemouth bass.  Lakes that have only LMB as the apex predator will have an over-abundance of stunted one pound bass.  An extremely high bass density will always keep bluegill populations lower, creating an environment that yields enormous individual bluegills.  Because there are less gills to catch, I have to work hard to catch them, but ridiculously overgrown humpbacks are usually the bounty.

Whitefish

Let’s face it, those who have the privilege of enjoying their favorite hobbies on a daily  or weekly timeframe have got it made.  It doesn’t really matter what that hobby is, but for everyone, it’s surely an activity that makes you happier.  But what happens when that hobby has lost it’s flavor.  There always comes a time when you need to expand that activity to keep your interests, um, well... interesting.  

As with most Wisconsin outdoorsmen during these ever-lasting winter months, my hobby is fishing, and this of course means drilling holes in pursuit of walleyes and panfish.  But as with any hobby, things eventually get repetitive and eventually become boring.  So, you need to spice it up and experience new things associated with your activity of choice.  For me, I spice things up by pursuing whitefish on Lake Michigan.

The ONE fortunate thing that arises from these bitterly frigid winters is that good ice cover forms on the Great Lakes, allowing it possible to fish through the ice on the biggest water the region has to offer.  To shake the winter blues this time of year, my destination is Green Bay, and my bounty is the hundreds of delicious whitefish that lurk under the ice in the surrounding big water.  Pounding whitefish is my way to keep ice-fishing adventurous, interesting, and fun.

Armed with a portable ice-shack, auger, medium action jig rod, flasher, and a couple of swedish pimples; I venture out onto the seemingly overwhelming sheet of ice.  To the contrary of what most think, the actual pursuit of whitefish is actually quite simple and easy, and surprisingly not overwhelming.  

If you are an ice-fisherman looking to switch it up, and have second guessed the possibility or your ability to try for whitefish on Lake Michigan, I promise you that it is easy.  You have the option of choosing from multiple boat landings along the coast, and every one of them is an adequate option.  There will be several vehicles parked at each landing, with scores of ice shacks two to four hundred yards off shore for you to have a good starting point.  I usually start in about 25 feet of water and move as far out as 35 feet.  There is no real rhyme or reason for a potential starting point, just start fishing.  

Whitefish feed directly off the bottom on larval stages of aquatic insects.  It often is key in the jigging technique to interrupt the sediment with the swedish pimple, as whitefish will become attracted to this disturbance.  Typically, an inch long pimple tipped with wax worms will do the trick.  Most anglers will tie a small stinger hook tipped with a waxie roughly 14 inches above the pimple; this is an excellent technique and will double your catch-rate.

What to do with all the your whitefish?  I prefer to pickle them.  Whitefish are a little tricky to fillet with an extra band of Y-bones, and the meat is quite flaky, so pickling the meat is ideal and allows me to dip into Ball jars whenever I’m craving a fishy snack months in the future.  A nice change of culinary pace to go along with the different angling experience, a double whammy.  Email me if you want more tips, or for a good pickling recipe.   

Muskies - My Best of 2013

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Cold Weather Monsters

There's a big time difference between accidently hooking up with big pike through the ice and actually targeting these leviathans with purpose.  Don't get me wrong, it's a nice bonus when you can ice a lunker pike when setting traps for walleyes, but it's simply a different story when you're actually fishing for them; which was the case on this particularly frigid day in Northern Wisconsin with the ppsf crew. 

Just a short clip of a decent pike a buddy captured on his cell.  BUT, the true action comes at the end of the clip, you'll notice Walter in the background with my damn glove, upping his game even further to become one of the all time great glove stealers in the region. ppsf

1st Place - World Muskie Tour Invitational Championship

http://www.professionalmuskieanglercircuit.com/2013/results/champ.html

I knew very little about Lake Namekogan, in fact, I first took a glance at a map on the Wednesday before the Championship, and that was of an old topo on the DNR website, but couldn’t really make out too many details considering I was looking at this map on my phone.  I noticed two things immediately, it was big, like 2800 acre big, and there were spots everywhere, like everywhere.  Islands, near-island weed edges, near-island weed edges closely associated with deep water, near-island weed edges closely associated with deep water that closely accompanied mid-lake humps and shallow running under water plateaus.  But wait, that was only one of three pages to look at.  There was more of the same on the map of the upper-lake as well, more mid-lake structure with islands and weed bars all over the place.  And then, I noticed all the back-water options, two completely separate small lakes and several back bays with one specific bay that should be considered a different lake as well. 

I live in Manitowish Waters, on Spider Lake.  I have access to 11 different lakes, all with polarizing characteristics, I barely have to drive anywhere, I take my boat every morning to work, to restaurants, and sometimes when I need to, I take my boat to the grocery store.  I live on the water.  But more importantly, I look for muskies everyday, and my friends do the same.  

My best day on the water had come the previous Saturday when a buddy took me to a small-water system where he had seen a super-tank around post-spawn time.  He figured it was late enough in the fall already to cast for her.  Within minutes we had a good 42ish work us on three different casts, flaring its gills, just behind on the figure eight for a good number of turns.  Moved to the next spot, boom, a beaut 46.5 in the net.  Moved to the next spot, boom, another fish.  Had action from a couple more fish but mainly tried for that big girl my buddy saw earlier this year.  I got blanked all week trying main lake structure on the chain, all spots that should produce some action, but not even a follow.  

It’s now Thursday night, me and my brother are getting gear together to head over to Namekogan in the morning and I reveal to him the lure I have been saving all year for this tournament.  He simply replies, “nice”.  I didn’t even use it in the qualifier.  Well, I used the same lure, just in a second-rate color pattern, and happened to have a fast double with it day one of that qualifier.  

We find ourselves on the windblown shores of Lake Namekogan the day before the championship, trying to mark spots, getting intimate with underwater structure, GPS-ing weed edges, all while trying to decipher everything on a computer printout of the lake, clenching it closely to prevent it from blowing out of the boat.  We drove around for about 3 hours and I knew Matty wanted to cast a little bit,  but we still had to check out all the shallower back bays and with one back-water system in mind.  We checked some back bays off the main lake and they looked good, perfect weed edges that could easily be fished slowly and effectively, but they were still too closely associated with the main lake; with the wind howling into them pushing baitfish up on the weed-edge, but yet I still wasn’t super confident.  

We head into the back-water smaller lake system that should have its own name all-together.  This system of water was completely locked off from the main lake save for a short narrow channel, and it had two basins.  It was a relief seeking shelter from the 30 mpg gusts and the first basin looked promising and we marked two spots that we would fish during the tourney.   But then as we eased into the second basin I noticed we were moseying through extremely shallow water to get there… the back basin was a totally different system all together, simply stagnant back water of good acreage, and as I crept up to the weed edge, I notice it’s a solid wall of weeds that breaks into immediate muck bottom.  The weed edge was at 7.5 feet with the center of the basin reaching a max depth of 13.  I turn to Matty, and see his anxiousness dissolve, and say ‘let’s cast this’.  So we start chucking blades in hopes of moving a muskie; just one single muskie is all I needed to see for this spot to work.  I move swiftly on the trolling motor and noticed excellent inside-out edges I can’t even keep up with, one second I’m on 5 ft weeds, the next, I’m in 9 ft muck.  Sweet! –tons of pockets and inside-out turns. 

There happened to be another tournament boat in there with similar ideas, I noticed one guy was working a bobby or a suick extremely fast.  I split equal time watching them, looking at the graph, and checking my own bucktail for follows; but mainly watching them.  I mentioned to Matty that it looked like they had their net out, and through the binocs, Matty confirmed it appeared they had just landed a 40 inch caliber fish.  

What?  It all made sense!  If there are a bunch of muskies back here, they will be feeding at some point during the day, just like the weekend before when we got into a bunch of fish in a similar back-water system; and plus, they will be easy to locate and catch because it’s all shallow water with no wind.   They won’t have a pouty attitude from the weather as much as their main-lake brethren, and perhaps most importantly, they have nowhere to go, they can’t seek deep water.  Boom, we have our spot!  

Ease-out time was set for 0630 and we were promptly in line as number 21, a lucky number some might say.  The sun still hadn’t come up and the ease-out was slow and congested as 0630 hit.  I drove through the judges and we received our two individualized fish tickets for the day.  By the time we shut all the boat’s compartments and got our gear back in place for the drive up to our spot, it was already nearing 0640 before I punched the Mariner to full throttle.  It was already breezy out, but the temperature was nice, and we made it to the south side of the pocket we were gonna work with a final 100 yard coast, somewhat trying to sneak in there, and somewhat not knowing exactly when I wanted to put on the breaks.  Boom we start casting.  The ease in to the spot ended up being perfect, enough time to get everything ready for casting, but not too short so as to waste our first casts.  

Its calm back there, and dawn is enough upon us to see exactly what I was casting at – a perfect inside turn on a wall of thick weeds that barely broke the surface with one or two inch-long emerging weed-tips that were visible to cast at and marked the absolute outside turn.  First cast, weeds. Second cast, still weeds.  Third cast, too deep.  Man this looks good!  Fourth cast, good.  Fifth cast, let it sink a bit… FISH!!!!  The muskie was in the net in about 6 seconds and Matty gave me a look of disbelief, I relayed a couple eye-brow raises back to him sending a message that we should be able to get another one.  It was a 40.5 at 0650.  

After registering the fish, sharpening my hooks, and waiting 15 minutes until we could officially cast again, I circled back and was in position for the same casts I had just made, only started back slightly further so I could make every cast possible at the same spot I had just caught the first fish.  I literally did the same exact thing on the second pass through, the boat is not moving, just picking apart the inside weed-edge; and BOOM, FISH!!! It was probably my seventh cast.  We had a 39.25 incher in the bag at 0715.  

We are done! Seriously?  It’s not even physically possible to have a faster double than that.  I look across the bay and the team that had caught the one pre-fishing the day before had a fish in the bag too.  Wow, that one measured 40.25 inches.  That back water bay was loaded with active 40-inchers.  I had no idea what to think.  Was there going to be a ton of fish caught today?  Dang, I was nervous and I loved the fact that we doubled, but just not happy with the size of the double.   I knew we were in good position but we needed a big fish on day two, at least.  

We had all day to monkey around with gear and watch college football.  After day one, there were 21 fish caught, and four teams had doubled, including us; with our double being the weakest.  I thought that is was odd that the three boats that saw us double-up that morning didn’t catch a fish all day, and the fourth boat, the team that caught their’s immediately after we got our two, just upped out and left that entire area.  No feeling aside, I thought that was the dumbest move I’ve ever seen in a tournament.  How do you not keep fishing that area?  Oh well.  I guess I did know one thing after day one; there had to be tons more fish back in there and none of them got seriously fished for.  

Day two ease out was a little swifter, but it was 15 degrees colder, my hands numbed up, in fact, my whole body was numbed up.  I was nervous and not feeling good.  Even though we got out of ease out a couple minutes quicker I took a wrong turn around a main lake island and honestly got lost for about 30 seconds.  But, here we go, same approach to the spot; slow.  I started a few casts down from where I had started the day before, absolutely picking apart this inside edge, barely moving the boat forward.  As I approach the exact location from the day before, I almost wanted to throw up I was so anxious.  As I’m dissecting this spot while using little flip-casts and working deep into the strike zone, I can’t stop shaking.  One cast there, one cast out a little, one cast in a little, one cast in between those casts, with the boat virtually stationary.  One cast even in between my last two casts, and…. FISH!!!  A tank of a mid-forties inch fish comes out of the water and thrashes its head, mouth wide open.  I bulldog her into the net so quickly I simply couldn’t believe what had just happened.

Fish #3, 45.5 inches at 650, the same time my first fish from the day before got clocked.  Did that just happen?  I knew we needed a fish like that on day two, but so early?  Again? I didn’t even want to think about our chances for victory or anything, I couldn’t stand up.  As we are waiting the final couple minutes before we could cast again I move out deeper and get back into position to hit the spot, I’m watching a different team try to fish that spot and thought to myself, wow, they have no idea how to catch fish; simply way too fast and too random of casts.  It’s time to cast now and I lazily grab the hook sharpener, lazily sharpen my hooks, just sitting there… with my mind blown away.  

So I do the same exact thing I did for the previous three fish, but this time, nothing.  I circle the weed promontory and tell Matty to pick apart the back side as I notice ahead about a cast length that there is another inside turn on the weeds, but this one came out a little further and to my surprise I found myself on top of the tip, and as I’m getting ready to work the back side of that I tell Matty to keep pounding the pocket because I missed a little portion of it.  Just then I’m about ready to go into my figure eight when in a matter of about one second, I noticed a swirl, I noticed tension on my rod-tip, I set the hook.  Boom… FISH!!!  A fatty 43 incher that didn’t want to go into the net immediately.  The time was 0720, and we just doubled again.  What? Seriously?  It was so easy, it was so fast; I needed someone to pinch me. We barley fished.  Matt looked and me and said, “What took so long that time, I was getting nervous”.  

I can safely say I made fewer than 35 casts for the whole tournament, and it turned out we never even needed that last fish because no other team boated three fish for the tournament.  We broke records for biggest quadruple, most inches, fastest double, second fasted double, biggest double, and cashed a check for 20 grand.  Honestly, I’m more curious as to how many fish I would have ended up catching if I could’ve kept fishing.  I think there are fish to be caught all over the place; but on that weekend, during the championship, I just had the upmost confidence in my lure, the upmost confidence in that spot, and upmost confidence in my ability.  I’m not the type to brag, but simply grateful that everything came together at the right time.