Request: ATV Rack?

Wondering if anyone out there knows of a rear-mounted ATV rack that's capable of carrying a portable fish house?

I've got a runner kit, but with all the running around I've been doing (Including a decent bit of driving on asphalt to avoid thin ice in channels) it's still taking it's toll on both the runners and the sled.

So, if anyone's got any recommendations, or thinks they know what I'm looking for, please leave a comment or shoot me an email!

The pictures to the right seem to be what I'm looking for, but the website that sells these racks have very few details about them. I shot the guy an email, but haven't heard back quite yet.

Ideally, it would be something that carries the house off the ice while moving (See Picture 1), but can quickly be lowered to the ice so you can flip the top over and get to fishing (See Picture 2). If it were a perfect world, I'd also love it if you didn't have to disconnect the fish house from the ATV rack (Aside from maybe undoing a few bungie cords or something of that nature).

Little summary of what I've heard from this weekend. Fishing seems to be okay still. Could've just been my spots that weren't producing (As I said, Wayzata bay was pretty heavily pressured).

Some things that you may want to consider:

• The bite seems to be for a longer time period. I've heard fish coming in as early as 4:00 and as late as 8:00.
• Fish (may) have moved deeper. Had two reports come in of finding fish in water that was significantly deeper than 20'.
• As far as I can tell, avoid the crowds. Stick close to them and you'll undoubtedly catch fish, but you'll be weeding through 20 small fish for every 1 that's worth keeping. 

Looking to get out this week and put those theories to the test. Will report back as soon as possible!

Walleyes! (1/19/2012 @ 12:00 - 5:00)

Got out on the ice today and did a good bit of live streaming. Had a request from a reader as far as some walleye spots on Tonka. Unfortunately, he asked for spots "other then Wayzata bay" and the spot I ended up at was on Wayzata bay, but either way, fish on!

Got to my spot around 12:30 after having some trouble starting the ATV in this cold weather. As if that wasn't enough trouble, on my way out I had the fish house jackknife out to the side due to so much clear ice and almost ran over it. In an attempt to stop, I actually did run over it a little bit, but no damage was done. To make it even worse, as I tried to shift gears from drive into neutral, it went an extra gear past neutral and went into reverse. Luckily the hitch that I have on my house released rather then staying attached, or else I would've been going backwards right on top of my portable. Lastly, once I finally did get to my spot, after drilling only 3 holes I ran out of gas mid-way through the 4th. At this point I was almost ready to head home.

Figured I'd give it some time and after hole hopping a bit I settled on the one that seemed to have the biggest perch. Not that I was too happy about that, but it's not a bad sight pulling 6-7-8" through the ice one after the next. I wouldn't be too sad to have Minnetonka turn into a good perch fishing lake if nothing else. It was about 3 hours of on and off fish, for 20 minutes you'd catch them one after the next, 20 minutes later it'd be dead silent, them's the breaks on Minnetonka.

Right before sundown (Literally, about 2 minutes after the sun went past the horizon) was when the fishing finally turned on. Walleye after walleye for a solid 20 minutes, in total I pulled 6 of them through the ice and kept 5. The last one was a bit small, and I figured I'd give him a couple more years before he makes it to the table. Was fishing in about 20 feet of water, and pulled every fish right up off the bottom. Had a Northland Tackle Moxie Minnow tied on with minnow heads as a kicker.

For those of you who stuck it out with me on the live stream, thanks a bunch! You can watch the video I took after the break. The action starts at about 5:00 and is pretty constant for about 15 minutes, then the last fish come up right near the end of the video. 

 

P.S. Forgot to mention I was seeing cars and SUVs out on Wayzata Bay. I won't say it's safe yet (Saw 11" of ice myself) but after this week I'd say it's probably safe to say otherwise.

Mille Lacs Fishing Report (1/6/2012 @ 7:00AM - 7:00PM)

Update: Apparently certain message boards no longer think that my content is suitable for their websites. I won't mention any names. Just a heads up for those of you who've been linked to this site from another, and want to keep following the blog. I appreciate everyone who's been sending emails and supporting the blog, as I've been having a great time (attempting!) to keep it up to date, and help people get on some fish themselves. As I've said before, I'd love for this to be somewhat of a "hub" for Minnetonka info, so if people have some reports they want to share, let me know!

Another update is that we're currently in the process of converting our old ATV into an ice machine. Think Lake of the Woods IceFox style ice machine. Oh yes.

Just got back from a pretty darn good day out on the ice. We headed up to Mille Lacs (I know, I know, it's a Minnetonka blog, but it's also a fishing blog ;) ) and rented a house through Lyback's fishing resort. Going to Lyback's has always been somewhat of a tradition for my family. My father and all his brothers have been going out there for going on 40 years now and despite having the capability of using our own house (As seen on the right sidebar) we still like to try to go out of Lyback's at the very least once every couple years. These guys go through hell and back just so you can have a smooth and worry free day on the ice even if you're not renting from them, so we figure it's always good to pay it back once and a while.

And with that being said, THANKS to Eddy (And his staff, I apologize for forgetting the guy's name who helped us out). Not only did you make the trip seamless, but you also managed to put us on fish, and point us in the right direction of fish when the bite turns off.

Got to the house at 7:00am, and I didn't last longer than about 30-45 minutes before I took to the portable. Drilled a good 10 holes in the Pope's Reef area and wasn't having much luck. Marked a fish here and there, and not many takers. Decided to head out towards the Graveyard since that's always kind of been our favorite spot out of Lybacks. Found about 20-22 feet of water and was hammering the perch one after another, but they were even smaller then the perch we get on Tonka! Couldn't stand losing that much bait for nothing, so I started back towards the house to see if my father and uncle were having much luck. Stopped at one last spot just south of the Graveyard and managed to find exactly what I was looking for. Got about 8 real nice jumbo's within roughly an hour window. I'd say from 9:30-11:00am, about 16 feet of water, and the structure that I was looking for was sort of an "underwater channel" so to speak. Eurolarvae were the ticket for me today. A Northland Tackle Moxie Minnow, tipped with a few larvae, and the perch would SLAM that thing. Minnows and minnow heads would get some real light bites, but as I said, larvae were the hot bite (All walleye came on fatheads, though).

The guys at the house (on Pope's) managed a few smaller perch, and some small eater eye's, as well as the biggun' of the day that came in around 5:00pm (Although, we'd swear this fish had been cruising around our spot for a couple hours because we'd seen him swim by a couple times). We didn't want to bother measuring and being disappointed that it wasn't keepable, so we didn't grab an exact length, but I'd guess around 24". The bite at the house, other than the one walleye, had almost shut off completely by about 3:00. Ice conditions were... strange, but for the most part, safe.

By no means a record breaking day on Mille Lacs, but seeing as we were told when we got up there that the bite hadn't been very good the past couple days, and that we "just missed" it, I'll take what I got!

Tight lines.

(Pardon my french :P - Also, I stop saying much of anything around 14:00, until the last few minutes of the second video. Unfortunately, as soon as I got around to re-rigging the camera mount and starting up the live stream, everything had quieted down.)

Quick Update

Quick update since it's almost 1:00am and I'm headed up to Mille Lacs tomorrow morning at about 4:30.

Got out on Cooks bay the other night. Still a slow night, but I did manage a walleye. Nothing worth bragging about seeing as he was only about 8", but I was marking fish and it at least let me know I was in the right spot. I got off the ice a little earlier then I would've liked (6ish), so I think I'll try to go out again soon, home down my spot, and give it a good 5-6 hours from sundown on.

Another new update is that we just purchased a new Honda Rubicon TRX500 about 5 hours ago. Can't wait to take it out on Mille Lacs for a good test run tomorrow! Got it so 1) I could be more mobile in the portable fish house, 2) our old ATV was a piece of junk, 3) to pull the big wheel house during those times before you can drive out there with a bigger truck.

We've already got an auger rack, GPS mount (Albeit unneeded since this baby has built in GPS-nav), and a rack for all your gear, so once I get those mounted I'll get some new pictures.

Here's to a good day out on the ice tomorrow! We'll be headed out of Lybacks as we rented a house from them, but I'll most likely be out and about in the portable the entire day. Check back tomorrow as I'll very likely have the live stream going a good part of the day provided I can get cell service out on Mille Lacs.