UPPER RED LAKE – Based on experience, Minnesota walleye anglers expect the season's first day to be the angling equivalent of Armageddon, which Webster defines as "the site or time of a final and conclusive battle between the forces of good and evil."
For the uninitiated, anglers are in this instance the force of good, and all things that conspire against them on the fishing opener, evil. This is especially true regarding the weather, which when walleyes become legal fare each year in May often hurls its whole kit and caboodle at wayfaring fisher persons young and old.
Rain, ice, snow, sleet, wind. The whole kit. And caboodle.
Saturday was different. When our bunch awoke at Paradise Resort on Moose Lake near Pennington, the eastern horizon bled oranges ranging from saffron to salamander to tangerine. The temperature was only 32 degrees. But the sky was clear and the morning windless, foretelling a day that, weatherwise at least, would be unlike most walleye openers.
We had elected to headquarter on Moose Lake, which is largely a crappie and largemouth bass lake with some walleyes, due to its proximity to some of the state's best opening-day waters. Cass Lake is nearby. Winnie isn't too far away. And Upper Red is about an hour up the road. Depending on the weather — wind, especially — we figured we could pick and choose which direction to head Saturday morning.
Being ambivalent sorts, we headed in two directions. Paul Kreutzfeldt of Stillwater and the four anglers with him — Larry Berndt, Corey Mogren, John Heroff and Pete Mogren — made a beeline for Upper Red, while Bob and Gina Kowalski of Vadnais Heights and their daughter, Lisa, joined Steve Vilks of Naples, Fla., Joe Hermes of Minneapolis, John Weyrauch of Stillwater and my son Cole and me on nearby Kitchi Lake.
Kitchi is connected to Cass Lake, and our belief was we might find some post-spawn walleyes hanging in either Kitchi or Cass or the waters connecting them. Which we did, a few. But by midmorning we were itchy on Kitchi and loaded the boats for Upper Red.
Others had the same plan.
When we arrived at West Wind Resort, hard by the shores of Upper Red, we had to get in line to launch our boat. The lake is extremely low this spring, and the public launch site on the Tamarac River is problematic. So private launches such as West Wind's are in demand — so much so that even Department of Natural Resources conservation officers launched their boats at West Wind on Saturday, foregoing the public site on the river.