I have these dreams at night;
Dreams of being locked to my hammer, always working and never ever getting to go nowhere.
Poor me I say, with little tears a dripping down my cheeks.
It was late evening, the 10th of September.
I was sitting at the drawing table, searching, searching for a key that had been missing for many months.
Finally, here it was, right here in front of me.
I grasp the key between my thumb and index finger and then inserted it into the ironwear, which had shackled me for oh so long.
It fit,
I turned the key and ….
And the ball and chain was thankfully now released.
Hmm…..
Now what I wondered?
I recalled a local fishing guide, Jeff Sundin, from Minnesota’s Deer River area, telling me not long ago, that if it was “quality” panfish I was after, as well as numbers of walleyes, yellow perch and northern pike, I should look to Sand Lake to fill my creel and all of my desires.
Sand Lake is a 33,000 acre body of wondrous water that lies just to the northeast of Minnesota’s Lake Winnibigoshish. Sand is part of the Bowstring chain of lakes;
A series of lakes connected by the Bowstring River and all part of the Artic Ocean’s watershed, for the waters of these lakes start the drain to the north from our continent’s divide.
Hmm…..
Jeff Sundin also told of nice place for Mrs. Luc and I to quarter ourselves while enjoying the wonders of these scantly people populated north woods. Driftwood Resort was the name of the place he mentioned. Driftwood, he told, is owned and operated by a very pleasing and accommodating couple, Chris and Stacy Olson.
I picked up the phone and jeez, within a matter of only a few minutes, was once again locked in, only, this time I was locked in to a much needed vacation, a fishing vacation by gosh, good and far from the hustle and bustle of our beloved Windy.
It was the “off season” and Chris offered us a deal on the lodging. I said, “Thank You Chris!” I took the deal and immediately took to the gathering and stacking for the packing.
Just a week and a day later, Mrs. Luc and I were being greeted by our personable hosts, Stacy and Chris.
That local guide, Jeff Sundin;
He was all about being truthful.
Driftwood Resort and its cabins are as neat and quiet as described and the second cabin of six was absolutely perfectly comfortable for the two of us.
I would show ya photos of the interior of our cabin but I didn’t take any. Mrs. Luc did but not before we took up residence and believe me, you really don’t want to see those photos. Those pics are full of stuff; fishing gear stuff, craft gear stuff, food stuff, clothing gear stuff and then too, just the plain ole stuff of stuff itself.
Comfortably accommodating these cabins are.
The lake;
The lake is slightly amber colored as one might expect, has a clarity range of two to three meters or so and gets its name from its mostly sand bottom, which I thought was pretty nice when not losing so many jigs all the day long in rock piles but if ya like rocks, Sand has them too. Weed growth is good, comprised of bulrush in the shallows and then coontail and some cabbage growing out to about the ten foot line and then it comes to an abrupt edge.
Sand Lake’s water quality is reported by the MNDNR as being of excellent quality and I kinda liked reading that when making through my choosings.
The fish;
The lake is full of em.
Full of all kinds and again, this fact weighed heavily on our decision making in choosing a lake and an area that was entirely new to us.
A couple things were important to me;
First, I needed a diverse fishery for Mrs. Luc’s sake. She is not one to climb out of a warm sack at daybreak on a cool morning in the northwoods just to take part in a fish bite when she knows darn well that there are fish that will bite during the late morning and early afternoon just as well as some do at or just before daybreak.
So, of course, we needed pike and panfish water to compliment those all so beautiful golden sided low light biters.
Can ya imagine?
Too;
It being just her and I, I looked to a place that wasn’t too far from civilization so as if she needed one of those fixes, like shaahhpping ya know, then civilization wasn’t out of the question too far away.
Oh, the fish.
Walleyes absolutely galore.
Jumbo yellow perch.
Bullheads, and I know what closet bullheaders each of you secretly are.
My momma didn’t raise no dummies.
Holdouts!
How bout northern pike? Like em?
There’s so many pike in Sand that the DNR has set a nine fish limit on them just to get rid of a bunch. Lots of hammer handles there are, for picklers and soupers and chowder lovers, fun catching those wild crazy things I say.
Crappies are in there and some real nice ones I’m told but I couldn’t find the biters.
Sunnies, oh yeah, sunnies like you and I only wish we had growing around here. You will see Mrs. Luc’s in the slide show that beat the heck out of any bluegill I have ever seen before. She always does that stuff to me; out fishes me so bad she makes me look just like I should take up another obsession.
I guess when it comes to fish in Sand Lake, it’s got em!
So how did we do and how did we do it?
Well, sad to say, we didn’t get any of those wonderful bullheads that a couple other aged anglers were nailing in their walleye hole one day.
We didn’t get any crappie either but I didn’t spend all that much time in the hunt for them, mainly, I guess, because they seem to like to feed at the same time those pretty golden sided fish like to feed.
The golden sided fish? Everywhere and everywhere they were. During the low light hours and on the windy cloudy days, they were up on top the humps. During the bright of day, we caught them from off the edges of the structure and hanging low to the lakes bottom. Many of the fish had already moved to the onshore weed cover though and we caught em along the weed edges just as well.
We pulled cranks, we pulled rigs, we drifted with crawler harness and drifted with minnows hook up on Roach rigs. We pulled Big Ole Mamma Jamma Hootchie Momma rigs strung through crawler noses and yes, they caught walleyes.
We jigged a whole bunch cause that’s just flat out fun in deeper water and boy did we ever have the fun with them. Jigs were all tipped with minnows, just plain ole big flathead minnows, nothing fancy.
I think we were in the in between on the seasonal preferences by getting our fish both on crawlers and on minnows and both from offshore structure and from the weeds.
Just Luc-y I think maybe.
The panfishing was a hoot.
It’s hard to not concentrate on just the pannies when they come of such nice size and extraordinary beauty. Pumkinseeds are primary in these waters but boy did we ever get into some nice bluegills.
Did I tell ya about that one bluegill that Mrs. Luc caught that’s in our freezer now waiting for a trip to the fish stuffer’s shop?
Oh MY!
We caught panfish on things under slips and by means of dragging jig-n-plastics. We tipped with stuff sometimes and sometimes we didn’t. We cast mini-cranks and we trolled them at times. Most everything worked.
Pike were along the weed edges eating our things all the time and they were hanging along the bottom of offshore humps to eat our walleye offerings as well. We didn’t target pike, there was no need; they were going to bite no matter.
Pike came in bunches, mostly hammer handles but I had the thrill of doing great battle on light line with one mid thirty incher that took me for a ride for a good long while and did the run under and around the boat stuff a few times before coming to hand.
Had one of those big gators make a swipe at one my golden walleyes just as I was about to hand land it. Whew!
Ok, enough;
The tree's colors were on the change with the maples and birch leading the way on the color front; maples in all shades of red and the birch complimenting the pallet with golden yellows.
The weather was so so nice; I just wish you could have been there too.
Well,
Somehow I know I have kept you too long.
Thank you for your time.
Any
A Couple photos:
http://www.chitown-angler.com/2fish/displayimage.php?album=1734&pid=30291&slideshow=5000
Please have a gander at Chris and Stacy's
Driftwood Resort:
http://www.driftwoodresort.net/
Thank you Jeff Sundin:
http://www.jeffsundin.com/
Simply AMAZING!! Bill, your pictures are breath taking to say the least! I've seen the sign for Sand on the way to Bemidgi with DWF, but never knew it was that big of a body of water.
Thanks for sharing!
I don't go back for hats. 
