Happy Birthday Pete!!!

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.