Jim Ridling, Ken Upchurch, Bill Coleman, and Wesley Dunn flew into International Falls on Thursday, June 6, dined at Thunderbird and spent the night on the Chairman. We begin our smallmouth fishing in earnest on this trip.  Smallmouth on top water baits really gets the guys going along with a homemade inline spinner that John […]

John, Bennett, David, Bill H., Jim, Jeff, John Den, Doug, Bill R., Dave arrived on Friday and Saturday; this was the beginning of John Kangas’s 34th annual trip to Rainy Lake Houseboats and the Chairman II. They played golf at the Falls Country Club on Sunday June 2nd.  The group dined at the Thunderbird Lodge […]

It has been a busy week with so many walleyes on the line it is plain hard to count! Starting a new season with a new boat always makes me nervous. I get very attached to my boat. My 2004 Lund Pro V IFS 2025 is a hall of famer. 3000 hours still no leaks, […]

Ice out on Rainy Lake was Thursday May 16th. Our first guests left the bay on Friday May 17th. We went from having a late ice out to having three days of intense low pressure. Winds were from the NE and fairly strong. The system dumped 5” of rain on Rainy Lake. The goods news […]

Yesterday was quite warm with a strong westerly wind. Rainy Llake is ice free from from Rainy Lake Houseboats dock all the way one mile east of Brule Narrows. Seine Bay, Bleak Bay, Little Grassy, Grassy Lake and Shoal Lake are open. One mile east of Bule Narrows there is a large ice pack blocking […]

75 % of our bay is ice-free. Houseboats are going in the water as I write. Black Bay, Sha-Sha, and Islandview areas are all free of ice. Main lake and Sand Bay still a mix of ice sheets and open water. Temperatures forecasted today are 62-67 degrees with south winds of 10-20 mph. Tomorrow rain […]

Well we have had the winter that just won’t end like the rest of the Midwest. Spring has arrived, we had good rains on Saturday, and temperatures are going to hit the high 60’s to 70 degrees today. Sand Bay is about 25% open basically from Ranier to Birch Point, the Sha-Sha- area is also […]

We have just started our last sport show left this winter, the Minneapolis Northwest Sport Show Thursday March 21 – Sunday March 24. It has been an excellent year for reservations. Of course there is usually a spot for you, just stop and see Tom and Joey Dougherty during the show, they were busy a […]

Winter has definitely settled in on Rainy Lake.  A normal old-fashioned winter has taken hold. Unlike the rest of Minnesota we have snow and and plenty of it. Snowmobiling is excellent on both the groomed lake and land trails. Ice is as good as it has been in some time.  We have had some temperatures […]

May 31, 2012 was a day Joey Dougherty and John Peterson of Northland Fishing Tackle will never forget as long as they live. The stars were lined up creating potentially spectacular smallmouth fishing. Rainy Lakes ice went out in record fashion the first week of April. The ice had been out for fifty two days on […]