A wild ride....

That may be the best way to describe the past several days... beginning with a helicopter ride into camp on Wednesday, May 15th. With time running out on us and LOTS of ice still floating around on the big lake, combined with NW winds (keeping it in our way), we made the decision to helicopter in. This afforded us the "luxury" of having all four of us (Milissa, me and our staff) in camp with a whopping 48 hours to get ready for the 2013 season.

With a simple one item "to-do" list we set in on the task at hand. Unfortunately the one item on the to-do list was "everything". While we didn't accomplish "everything", we were ready for our first guests this morning.

It remains amazing to me how quickly the ice conditions can change, as we boated out to the big lake yesterday morning only to find ice from Peffley's Point as far as we could see towards Indian narrows. The leading edge we broke through was probably still 2 1/2" thick and the ice looked more silvery the further you looked towards the narrows, indicating to me that the ice there could be at least 4-6" thick. By 2:00 in the afternoon, NE winds had moved all that ice into back bays and the entire length of the big lake that had been 100% ice covered was now 100% ice free. Game on! Time to get guests into camp and get the 2013 season underway.

So here we are, Saturday, May 18th (2013 opening day) and we have been greeted with intermittent sprinkles throughout the day. Nothing even heavy enough to call a shower. Light winds, warm temps (around 60), made for a very nice opening day. The fishing reports by days end made it even nicer as everyone in camp reported excellent fishing for the day, including Tom Casper's crew who stated it may very well have been their best opening day with us EVER. Water temps of 46 degrees also had me amazed, as with such a late ice out I was anticipating fishing water no warmer than 39-40 degrees, but the warmer water really helped with the walleye bite.

I will try to get some pictures here on the Blog or Facebook soon of our flight into camp and some fishing pictures from opening week.

Until next time...