Stacey, Joshua, and I made our eighth family vacation/fishing trip together to Arcadia Lodge up on Big Turtle Lake mid-June. We stayed in the Rustic cabin for the sixth time.

Smallmouth bass action was fantastic! The mayfly hatch was in full bloom. The best technique was mid-trolling with a 3/16 oz. jighead and a 5″ Sakamata Shad. Casted it out letting in drop a few feet and begin working it back with fast twitches until the rod loads up signaling a fish is on. Other lures that worked were a Ned rig with a 2.5″ Stealth Craw in the 309 color, Sleeper Craw (caught the biggest bass at 19″), and a 1/4 oz. jighead with a live crayfish caught in the minnow trap. Mostl bass were in the 17″ to 18.5″ range.

Check my full-length vlogs below for the full action along with my family video!

What a day. Over 20 catfish made it to the boat, both channel and flathead. They were out chomping yesterday morning. Weight ranged from 3 lbs. to a whopping 30 lbs.!!

Rippin’ cranks for Lake Pepin walleyes! Casting to windblown points while exploring miles of shoreline searching for ole marble eyes. Another great day on the water.

An early morning outing to the river! A good variety of fish, you just never know what you will get with a ball of nightcrawlers. JT caught his first carp too. He’s becoming quite the fisherman.

A quick day trip to the Rainy River on April 19th! In search of big dinos that the Rainy River is known for in the spring, my cousins Binh and Thinh, friend Dylan, and I didn’t find any big sturgeon but had a blast catching lots of smaller ones including a 41 incher. A total of 13 sturgeon made it to the boat!

Not an ideal morning fishing in wind gusting over 40 mph but we did find a sheltered area and got on a good bass and pike bite for a bit. Surprisingly not a jig bite. All our fish came on fast moving baits.

What an incredible night! Our awesome guide Darren Troseth (a.k.a. DTro) of 3 Rivers Fishing Adventures put my cousin Binh and I on several sturgeon, largest coming in at a whopping 53 inches! Five fish total including a 37”, 53”, 49”, 47”, and 48”, and a couple small channel and flathead catfish to top off a beautiful evening on the St. Croix River!

A fun family night of panfishing!

Just came back from another awesome fishing trip and quality family time up at Arcadia Lodge. This was our seventh year there. I decided to do a full-length fishing vlog documenting highlights of my fishing outings. In the video, some highlights you will see are a bowfin (dogfish) follow, 18.5″ smallmouth, bowfin #1, 21″ smallmouth, bowfin #2, and 20″ smallmouth. The video is lengthy so if you wanted to skip to certain segments, below are the time bookmarks. Hope you enjoy my new fishing vlog!

3:34 Bowfin Follow
5:33 18.5″ Smallmouth
6:43 Bowfin #1
8:28 21″ Smallmouth
11:49 Bowfin #2
14:46 20″ Smallmouth

Visit Arcadia Lodge at: http://arcadialodge.com/

Introduced J to a little river fishing yesterday morning… His first ever freshwater drum and flathead catfish!