Five Miles From the Truck, With a Limit of Walleyes and a Problem

In case they slipped by you, following are the most read fishing stories of the week. Five Miles From the Truck, With a Limit of Walleyes — and a Problem; How to Win an Ice Fishing Derby Without Cheating; The Fish That Becomes an Obsession for Fly Anglers.

1.) Five Miles From the Truck, With a Limit of Walleyes — and a Problem

Close up of a grainy black and white photo of an angler's thumb after an accident with a fish hook. — Five miles from the truck, after dark, with a limit of walleyes — and a treble hook I didn’t plan on bringing home. | Joe Shead

I throttled my snowmobile down a packed, sometimes hilly trail. There are not many slam-dunk walleye spots I know of, but my plan was to make a 5-mile ride to a little isolated rock reef on an overlooked lake in northern Minnesota.

I reached the spot about 3 p.m. and Swiss-cheesed the structure with holes. At 3:15 a bright red mark appeared on my Vexilar just below my spoon, and seconds later, I felt a heavy thump. Soon, the night’s first walleye was on the ice.

It was 45 minutes before I marked another. After 4:00, however, those red marks were a frequent sight on my screen. These fish clearly hadn’t seen much fishing pressure and bit aggressively.

As darkness descended, the bite slowed.…GET THE REST OF THE STORY HERE.

2.) How to Win an Ice Fishing Derby Without Cheating

A table full of trophies in the foreground and ice fishermen in the background. — Trophies line the stage as anglers compete on the ice during a midwinter fishing derby. | Envato | 2BNLRKK | mona2013liska

A cannon went off and simultaneously, 3,000 anglers dropped their lines in the water. And simultaneously, 3,000 anglers got static on their electronics because of all the interference from so many close-packed units. But I fished, undeterred. Big prizes were at stake, including a first prize of a new truck or $20,000 cash!

Mere minutes into the 3-hour ice fishing derby I thought that maybe, just maybe, I saw a fish on my blurry flasher screen. A few seconds later, that thought was confirmed when a slight peck telegraphed up my line to my rod tip. I set the hook and began reeling. Seconds later, a 6-inch perch popped up through my ice hole.

This was not my biggest or proudest fish. But I clutched it and ran to the circus tent like Charlie Bucket running through the streets with a golden ticket to the Wonka chocolate factory! At the weigh-in, my perch registered at something like 3 ounces. But when the smoke cleared, the 3,000 anglers registered a grand total of 72 fish -- not even enough to claim all 100 prizes!…GET THE REST OF THE STORY HERE.

3.) The Fish That Becomes an Obsession for Fly Anglers

A fly angler is fighting a fish from shore in Belize for a Wild Fly Production film. — Scott Finanger of Wild Fly with "fish on!" in Belize. | Photo provided by Wild Fly Production

I have this dog. She’s obsessed with the squirrels in our backyard. She’ll sit at the back door staring out the window for hours, waiting for one to show up. When it does, she barks and cries until I let her out. She never catches them. And she never stops trying.

I don’t look down on her. I don’t think she’s crazy. I know the feeling — a lot of us who call ourselves fly anglers do. We’re an obsessive bunch. We can lock in on one species of fish and follow it straight into something close to manic tunnel vision.

For me, it was striped bass in the surf. Not just striped bass, and not just the surf. It had to be a striped bass on a fly rod in the surf. That combination became the thing. The longer it took, the more it mattered. The closer I got, the bigger the fish grew in my head…GET THE REST OF THE STORY HERE.