Tom, John, Tracy, Steve and Josh ventured to Brindley’s Harbor resort on Leech lake for ‘nearly’ 3 days of good fishing. (last day was slow)

​The cabin was top notch, easily the best accommodations yet, and the quantity of fish caught was also good. Size of the fish was smaller than average, most perch were just under 10″, and walleye were sparse. Total kept count of ~145 (avg 29 ea) = 120 perch, + 3 northern, 2 walleye, plus the 20 perch ate on-sight. Total thrown back estimated at ~200. (And a bonus – all fish were cleaned by Brindley’s !)

​Travel time was under 8 hours – very nice compared to LOTW or Devils. We penciled in our return for same time next year, with expectations for accommodating more.

Great time had by all, (no rods lost due to Dan’s absence:)). We’ll invite Josh again next time for a reality check since rookie luck prevailed for him this time as he out-fished us all. ​Fish pics courtesy of Josh!

John Michael writes:

I caught all perch, but managed to catch a lot. The secret was moving from hole to hole. If the fish weren’t biting at one hole move to another and keep looking for fish. I caught 17 perch on Wednesday, 6 on Thursday (it was a lot colder and windier so I didn’t stay outside as much), and 43 on Friday. I caught 19 out of one hole and 13 out of another. When I was catching fish I couldn’t bait my hooks fast enough. I would no sooner drop my line in when a fish would hit and I could pull it out. My largest perch was 11 1/2 inches. Not as big as we’ve seen other places. We kept anything above about 9 inches. The resort guys cleaned and packaged our fish for us. We sent over 120 fish in for cleaning. I only caught one fish in the house. Others had better luck in houses. I lost track of how many keepers I had. It was about one in three or four catches.

We had two houses, one 4-man and one 2-man which were pretty far apart but within walking distance. They drilled a bunch of holes around and between the two houses so we had lots of places to fish. The idea was that we would fish the holes outside and have the houses to warm up in. The two-man house was over weeds and that is where most of the Northern and Walleye were caught. We did not bring any ice scoops with us as we have never needed them other places. But we needed them so the guides let us use theirs. We could have each used one since the holes tended to freeze up if no one was fishing them.

Friday afternoon the area around our houses went quiet. Apparently it went quiet for a lot of the people on the ice. The guide offered to take us to another area he said they were catching perch. So Tracy and I followed him down the lake a ways where he had drilled a bunch of holes. We started fishing. Tracy moved from hole to hole but I didn’t have to. I found a hole that the fish were under and pulled out 13. We brought back 6 keepers from that area.

Our cabin was great. The five of us were in a 9-man cabin so we each had our own bedroom. The two bedrooms downstairs had their own bath and shower and there was a laundry room/bath room off the main area. Upstairs there were three bedrooms with 5 beds. One room had a king bed. There were two baths and one bath had a shower. There was another room downstairs that was closed to us. It has two beds, a bath and a kitchen area. We we could have 11 people in the cabin we had. The cabin was well stocked with plates, cups, silverware, bowls and cooking utensils, and had two dish washers with soap so we just put what we used in and ran it while we were out or at night.

We drove our own trucks out on the ice. That worked out very well for us. Thursday and Friday we stayed out until after dark hoping to see Walleye. We didn’t see the fish but at least we got to try. We didn’t have any problem getting back to the resort in the dark.