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What is a good day of fishing anyway. Just being out there fishing that’s what it is. I was out with Tony yesterday on one of my favorite lakes, Grindstone Lake, near Sandstone Minnesota. [See more on Grindstone Lake in the Where To Go page]. I have fished this lake for many years, both on hard water and open water. Yesterday was kind of a unexpected day as far as lake trout.

I usually fish for lakers in deeper water, and was targeting rainbows, fishing in about 5 feet of water. Rainbows like to cruise these shallow depth, but I sure didn’t expect small groups of lake trout to cruise by as well. We spotted some rainbows here and there, and one 13 incher nailed my teardrop with a waxie attached. Then about 15 minutes later a large lake trout swam right under our holes. We tried to entice the laker into biting but he wasn’t fooled [ or just not hungry].

Then a little later two or three more lakers came by to visit us, with again no takers. I put a fresh waxie on my teardrop panfish jig since it’s been in the water for some time. Few minutes later as I was twitching the jig about a foot under the ice, a big head appeared and inhaled the jig. It was one of the lakers, a nice 4 pounder. Couple of fist bumps and a cold one to celebrate the catch. I was using 2 pound test florocarbon mono. We were limited for time so we packed up with a few rainbows and that nice laker to keep that smoker busy soon. Any day is a good day to be out in the outdoors. Here are a couple of pictures of the lake trout and one of the rainbows that Tony caught.