We spent today on Devils Lake in North Dakota fishing with our guide, Ancil Reynolds. Today was definitely the opposite of our lazy day on Lows Lake. We were up the fishes but as the pictures will show, it was totally worth the effort.

We all slept like rocks in our VRBO last night. There are 2 sets of bunks beds in the apartment – with full mattress on the bottom and a single on top. Mike and I decided to “bed divorce” and sleep on the two bottom bunks and I think we liked having the extra room to spread out because we were all sawing logs last night.

Ancil is a really nice guy who works Monday through Thursday in Minot, North Dakota as a construction supervisor. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, he does what he loves… fishing! He was an awesome guide, smart, patient and funny. He had lots of fishing tall tales, and we all got a bit tickled with his Minnesota accent and dialect. “Oh yah” and “I says”

We met Ancil at 7am at Ed’s Bait and Tackle. We had our handy vacation cooler loaded with sandwiches, oranges, waters and pop (Minnesota and North Dakota for diet coke, coke and sprite). The weather today is supposed to be crazy hot for North Dakota… 90 degrees, but without the humidity, we weren’t terribly worried about it. We loaded up in Ancil’s truck and headed to the West side of Devils Lake…

As we drove, Ancil was telling us about the drought they had here last year. He said it got so bad that there was no hay to feed the cows so they ended up baling cattails and using as cow feed! Not only was it bad enough that they feed the cows the tough cattail, but the ground was dry enough to get baling equipment into what should be the marshy areas where cattails normally grow.

This two weren’t too happy about the 6:30 wake up call but they still gave me a couple of pictures

It was absolutely gorgeous on the lake!

We started off using spinners and bottom fishing. Mike and I had a good bit of luck with these, but the boys didn’t… they got lots of nibbles but couldn’t land the fishes. With the rocking of the boat like a bassinette, Michael decided to take a nap.

We spent the morning fishing and got a pretty good start to our limit of 25 walleye for the day

We headed in around lunch time for mom to have a bathroom break (unlike the boys, I can’t just “go off the back”), washed our hands and broke out our sandwiches as we headed to another spot to try our luck with bobber fishing… still fishing for Walleye but now we were using leeches instead of nightcrawlers (Yuck!)

The bobber fishing was more hit or miss. We would hit a spot and everyone was pulling in fish left and right or it was absolutely dead.

In the afternoon, the really nice breeze of the morning disappeared and the sun started getting hot… still without the North Carolina humidity but 90 degrees on a lake without a breeze is still pretty warm. Eyelids were getting pretty heavy whenever we moved to a new spot and the wind whipped around up.

It was really fun out on the lake and we caught almost our limit… 21 walleye, 1 perch and 1 white bass.

Now to the part I was dreading, the cleaning. Part of Ancil’s fee, includes cleaning and packaging the fish, but I wanted the boys to see how much work was involved in cleaning and preparing fish from the water to the freezer. We headed to the local “cleaning area” and got started. The cleaning station isn’t fancy but they’ve got everything you need. Boys were in charge of washing out basins and filing with cold water.

Not a bad haul for one day from 4 novice fishermen

Ancil showed boys how to lay the fish out,

To get the perfect picture!

Then the work began. Ancil got out his electric knife, and went to town. Wow, that electric knife makes all the difference! He sliced at the neck, flipped it, did the same thing, and then went straight down the backbone. He would then flip it again, cut the skin off and then do the same thing the other side. Then he dropped the filets into one of the basins of clean water.

And then after you have a stack of heads, tails and guts, into the grinder it goes.

One more step, Ancil took the fillets back out, cut the ribs out and put into the clean water.

All total we ended up with 48 filets, 8 of which we will be eating tonight. The other 40, Ancil will package and send to us via FedEx when we get home. Can’t wait to eat walleye that we caught in North Dakota later this year. Leo kept saying “can you believe we caught this?”

We cleaned up the cleaning station – spraying the table off and squeegeeing the table off into the grinder. And then we headed back to Ed’s Bait Shop to grab a souvenir for our travel tree and our car. Since we all stunk, we had the windows down, and after such an early start and the hot sun, some of us were sleepy, and some of us made pictures

As we got to Ed’s Bait Shop, we noticed how crowded it was and

As we got Ed’s Bait Shop, we noticed the crowd and asked if it was it normal for so many people to be at the Bait Shop at 5:30 on a Friday? Yes, when half the bait shop is a bar, and on Fridays they do a “Meat Raffle.” What’s a Meat Raffle you ask? A Meat Raffle is when the owner of the bar goes to WalMart and buys all different kinds of meat, and then they raffle off the packages for a $2 ticket. Maybe you’ll get a ribeye steak, maybe you’ll get a pound of ground beef, BUT you’ll come into the bar, buy a drink and have a great time with buddies on a Friday night at the Meat Raffle. Ancil said since the owners started this, they’ve had a great crowd every Friday afternoon/night and it sure sounded like it when I went in the Bait Shop.

We headed back to the grocery store for a few items for our fresh dinner of fried walleye. MAN! These were delicious, and like Leo said “Can you believe we caught this?”

Bellies full, we tried to watch a movie, but this mama was asleep by 9:30 and the boys were close behind at 10:30. Apparently, fishing is hard work. Tomorrow, we leave Devils Lake and head to Minot, North Dakota so we can experience the North Dakota State Fair!