The Vexilar Christmas Tree

You decide to tackle a day of fishing on Devils Lake.  You do a little research, you make a couple phone calls, you read a few fishing reports online.  You make your way to your destination, confident that you have all the tools in your tool box to achieve Cleaning Station Super Stardom.

You make your way to your selected landing, drive out about 100 yards and realize:

‘Holy smokes, this thing is huge, where does a guys even begin?”

You drive to the spot the kid on the phone from the bait shop said his 3rd cousin’s boyfriend’s brother got into them two days ago, drill 2 holes and sit there and don’t mark a fish for 3 hours.  Your delusions of grandeur are dashed on the ice and you sulk back to your abode, call your buddy and tell him, “I just don’t think there are any fish in that lake.”

If I had a dollar for every time I have heard a similar story told to me either at the bar or bait shop I would be a wealthy man.

2 Fatal Mistake

The mistakes made above is the reliance on how the information was attained, where it was attained, and the inflated expectations of what Devil’s Lake provides all the time, everyday. Two things that one must realize about fishing the Big Devils:

1.  All of those bait shop pics and all of those fishing reports blanket a large number of days and a very large sample size of fishermen.  Truth is, no one slams them everyday.  Most often times, a few in the bucket is a successful day and one can hope for a grand slam every once in a while.  I like to tell people that on a 4 day trip hope for one Grand Slam, a Triple, and probably a couple singles or a strikeout.
2. DO NOT try to compare yourself and your success to a guide service or resort/bait shop picture page.  You are one man, or maybe a small group of fishermen attempting to tackle 240,000 acres of water and have a short window to do so.  Those guides and resort pages are supported by a network of fishing information, a network of fishermen, and numerous bodies drilling a lot of holes everyday to keep them on top of the changing moods and movement of the fish.  Five guys on ‘guys weekend’ for 3 days can never hope to equal that amount of knowledge.

I am not trying to dissuade you from coming to Devil’s Lake, on the contrary, we want you to come.  We love to show off this Jewel of the Northern Tier we call home.

We also want you to have an awesome experience and to tell your friends about it on your return home.

To do that, we will explain to you the 4 types of days that we experience on DL, remember, the greatest part of fishing is the experience and it is called fishing, not catching for a reason.

The 4 Types of Perch Days We Experience On Devil’s Lake

1.  The Vexilar Christmas Tree–  You drill 15 holes and on hole #12, BANG!  On em, the bottom is lit up.  You drop your lure down in 35 feet of water and as your lure hits 20 feet, the bottom on the Vexilar zoom erupts in an explosion of reds, greens, and blues and its Christmas, 4th of July, and your birthday all at once.  You are unhooking Perch and rebaitng as fast as possible and calling every buddy you know that is on the ice to: ‘GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!!”  Your phone slips out from between your cheek and shoulder, bounces off your knee, your vexilar, your rod, hangs on the lip of the hole for 1.78 seconds and then slips to the icy abyss below, AND YOU DON”T EVEN CARE!  You are a Devils Lake Perch God! This is the day we are all hunting.  This is also NOT THE NORMAL DAY!  It is wonderful to experience and if you ever get the opportunity, savor it.                          
2. Marathon Hole Drill–  You drill, and drill, and drill, and drill, you drill for it seems like forever and finally mark a few fish, they are timid and you decide that you are sick of drilling.  You set up on the fish you are marking, drop down slip bobbers and jig in one hole and you manage to get 5 nice Perch to bite. You miss 2 and go home with 3.  You are exhausted, your ego is crushed, and when you get to the cleaning station the guys next to you have 60 fat Devil’s Lake Jumbos and are high living left and right.  You quickly clean your 3 and walk head down out the door wishing you knew where they were fishing.                                                                
3. “Shoulda Been Here yesterday”– Your out on the bay, you can see from the top of the ice that there had to have been a lot of fishing activity as there is trampled snow, 100’s of minnow bodies with no heads littered everywhere, and definitive signs of human activity.  You drill in, drop your lure down, there is a shimmer on the bottom but it never does rise up.  Sporadically throughout the day, a couple Yo-Yo’s pop up and look, but as soon as you jig it, they fly back to the bottom.                                                                                                        
4. The Typical– You drill 10 holes, mark fish in 3 of them, pick off 2 nice Perch and then don’t mark fish for another hour.  You move, drill 5 holes, mark 2, catch 1.  This process continues on and by the end of the day you have a respectable bucket of 8-14 beautiful Devils Lake Jumbo Perch.                                

We have experienced all 4 of the above scenarios.  We have intimate knowledge of the euphoria of number 1 and all too often the dejection of 2 and 3.  Often times, the search for number 1 results in number 4.

The Variables Will Define The Day

There are so many variables that go into the results of your fishing days on Devil’s Lake.

1.   The pressure

2.   The moon

3.   The weather

4.   Time of year

5.  Sun or clouds.

We believe, however, the most important one is the one that you can control, the human element: YOURSELF!  

Keep drilling, if your marking fish, keep grinding on em.  If your not marking fish, drill some more, move, change depths.

We guarantee there are fish, and lots of them, in them there waters.

Keep Drilling!

Good Luck Out There…

Hold On To Your Rod…

and

CATCH MORE FISH!