Pine Ridge Resort News & Views

Which explains why I haven’t been adding much new to the blog the last month or so.  I don’t think it rained an inch here all of May and the first couple weeks of June.  Now it’s raining (much to the dismay of our current guests) and we have gotten over an inch during the past week so it’s nice and green here and the lake levels are good.  Summer arrived today and we’re finally getting some summer like weather.  It’s been very cool and quite a bit more windy than usual but it has been warm and sunny for several days now with our current rain as the exception.

Fishing has been different this year with the late spring.  Last week guests were still catching crappie with eggs in them.  Very late for their spawn.  And just a couple of days ago we starting catching female bluegill and sunfish on their spawning beds so there should be some excellent bluegill fishing for the next week or so.  Not sure but I don’t think the bass have spawned yet.  Water temps in the shallows have just reached the upper 60’s in the last few days.

Walleye fishing has been very poor so far this season. Earlier, as I mentioned in my last entry, bigger walleye seemed to be all that we could catch but there were very few of them.  Then, for the last week to 10 days, all we could catch were 8″ to 10″ walleye.  Cute litte things but you just couldn’t justify putting them in the pan.  Now, this morning we caught several bigger fish that we could put in the live well without embarassing ourselves.  Hopefully, it’s a trend.   I’ll let you know in a week or so.

As you may have seen on our web site, we have added a new boat to the Pine Ridge Resort fleet.  It’s a beauty.  A 2009 Lund 1625 Rebel XL tiller with a 50 HP Mercury 4-stroke outboard.  Four deluxe seats, 55 lb thrust trolling motor with CoPilot, live well and bait well, a Lowrance depth finder and vinyl flooring for easy clean-up. Here’s a pic with myself and Chris Heir, a regular guest in the seats.

The photo was taken by Jeremy Heir

I’m doing my best to get the thing broken in so it will be all ready when someone wants to rent it. Sometimes this resort business is such a hassle. 

So summer is here, the water has warmed up for swimming, and the fish are cooperating for the most part.  I’ll try to do better in updates to the blog.  See you at the lake.

The calendar says June and that means warm air, warm water, swimming and suntans.  So far, all we have seen is layers of sweatshirts and raingear to keep the wind from chilling our bones.  It has been a very cool and windy spring all over the north country and we are ready for some warm, sunny days.  Now I suppose it will go to 85* with no wind.  I guess you need to be careful what you wish for.

On the other hand, it has been a very busy spring here at Pine Ridge Resort. Lots of big and little things have gotten and are getting done that should have been done some time ago.  Three more cabins have been repainted, new doors have replaced some of the worst of the old ones, a new stairway down to the lake was constructed at Colonial, and now I’m working on the old boat trailer that has been sitting in front of my garage for 2 years.  When that is all fixed up and new seats are installed on the boat, I’ll have a unit that guests can trailer to some of the many smaller lakes around the area to check out the fishing on them.

Speaking of fishing, it has been so-so this spring.  With the weather changing every day, it’s hard to find a pattern to the fishing and the many windy days have limited the time people wanted to be on the water and the places they could fish when they went out.  The water temps are very cool for this late in the season. Still not over 60* as of June 7. We’re getting some sunshine now for the last couple of days so I expect that we’ll finally get over 60* by the weekend.  I got an email from a guest asking about water temps and I recommended that they bring their insulated swim suits.

With those cool waters, fish spawning is delayed which is keeping the fish in shallow water longer.  Last week, guests were still catching some very nice crappie.  Below are Steve and Rob Ferenz, long time guests here with a couple of their catches.

Blue gill are starting to move onto spawning beds now as are the bass.  Should be a couple of good weeks of fishing left before we move into summer patterns.

Walleye have not been very cooperative yet this year.  For a while, it seemed like only the big fish were biting and very slowly.  Several fish over 20″ were caught last week including this 26″ beauty my brother caught trolling a minnow on an jig along the south shore of Woman Lake.  The fish was successfully released.

Now is seems like all we can catch are 8″ walleye.  My neighbor was out a couple of nights ago and caught 25 - 8″ fish in about 3 hours.  He finally did manage to boat a couple of eaters but the little ones were all over the bottom of the lake.  Bodes well for next year, I guess.

My brother, Bruce, my brother in law and I had a great 5 days fishing lake trout in Canada mid-May.  We have done this fly in for three years now and really have a good time.  No big fish but plenty of them.

All in all, the season is off to a pretty good start.  Occupancy has been good except for this week and we’re just about filled up until late into August.  There are a few scattered openings, several next week, one in July due to a reservation change and several in early August.  The economy has definitely been a problem for quite a few of our guests and we hope that things turn around faster than predictions forecast.

We have a beautiful day going here today so I’m going to get outside and find something to do.  Like that is a problem.  Take care and we hope to see you at the lake this summer.