Missin the Fishin?

One of the favorite things that we enjoy here in northern Minnesota is the fishing. We always look forward to ice out and spring fishing which is the best. That is the time that we like to stock up our freezer with our limit of crappies and walleyes because other times of the year, they are harder to catch or out of season. Walleyes and crappies are a couple of the best tasting fish on the planet, especially when they are fresh out of the lake.

Last year in particular, my husband and I were both looking forward to the spring fishing season but the unusually early warm weather seemed to unexpectedly mess up the fish bite. Things have picked up lately and we have had a couple of good days catching walleye on a new lake.

Up until just recently we have been eating almost all the fish that we caught as soon as we got them cleaned. We are finally starting to be able to put a few in the freezer for eating during the leaner months.

Our current plan is to start spending about half a year here in northern Minnesota and half a year in the Philippines until we decide that moving there permanently is what we really want to do. The last time my husband and I went to the Philippines in 2009, he had planned to go fishing on Lake Mainit several times in order to see if we could catch anything. As it turned out, we only spent half a day fishing there and never got a bite. The weather was oppressively hot and humid that day and we decided to quit early when we weren’t getting any fish.

Investigating Various Methods

Fishing pressure on that lake is heavy from the locals and he suspected that the population of larger fish is very slim due to all the trapping and netting that goes on there. There are no size or bag limits like here in Minnesota so heavy pressure can quickly deplete even a large resource like Mainit if there is no serious effort at management. As we begin to spend more and more time there, he hopes to try fishing that lake again sometime and maybe have better luck after investigating various methods and times as to when we might have a better chance to catch something. Just after coming in from fishing, we did see a large eel that a woman had caught there. That was one of the species that he was hoping he could entice to bite his lower. He thinks it would have been great fun since he has never caught anything like an eel before.

He suspects that ocean fishing around Mindanao may also hold some promise but he has never done any research to verify that thought. If anyone out there has any information regarding fishing in the southern Philippines, he would surely appreciate it.