Our famous Chairman II houseboat has a chef with all meals included; it is supplied completely by Super One Foods. This houseboat alone uses a couple hundred pounds of W.F. Stewart bacon per year. Many of the Chairman guests even order a supply to take home it's so good.

Once your vacation finally starts and you arrive at base, you don't want to be standing around doing paperwork. There are some other things you can do in advance that will ensure you start captaining your houseboat as quickly as possible.

a. Fill out the Houseboat Manifest Form. We are required by our insurance company to have all the names and addresses of our guests on file. You can find this form online under the For Booked Guests link. Print it out and fill in the information prior to arriving so you need not worry about it when you arrive.

b. If you are fishing and/or mooring the houseboat in Canada, obtain your Remote Area Border Crossing Permit (RABC) and Canadian Fishing License prior to arriving. Again, you can find this information on our website: www.rainylakehouseboats.com. The RABC will take approximately 6-8 weeks to arrive in the mail. We need the Canadian Fishing License form filled out and returned to us 3 weeks prior to your vacation so we have time to obtain them before you come.
Last minute items and gifts for people back home as well as yourself can be found right on base. Rainy Lake Houseboats has a gift store that is stocked with Rainy Lake gear, clothing and great gift items along with a supply of soft drinks, bottled water, block and cube ice and other miscellaneous items you may have forgotten to pack. Minnows, leeches and night crawlers are also available at Rainy Lake Houseboats for your convenience as well.

Springtime Stick Bait Tactics

I walked into Sportsman's Service in International Falls to visit with friend and owner Tim Shuff. Tim is an independent owner who stocks rods, reels, tackle and you name it he has it. When walking through the aisle with stick baits guests look and wonder, "what should I buy?" "How do you use it? What color works best? What kind of line and what pound test should be used?"

Flat Rap

These baits can be trolled or cast with the least effective way just casting and reeling in or throwing it out and trolling behind the boat with no rod tip action. If you were to have the opportunity to see baitfish and their movements you would see them cruising sand beaches, rock points, and weed edges enjoying the day. Let a predator swim into the area and the world changes. They frantically dart, dive, jump and plain just try and escape.

Stick baits can mimic the same evasive actions that minnows or baitfish use. We often refer to stick baits as jerk baits. Many have a characteristic called neutral buoyancy. This means when you set the bait on the water it does not sink and barely will keep its back out of the water. Put a swivel on or fish it with fluorocarbon and it will sink. How does this help or why not use a normal old floating stick bait? When you cast these baits to your target you use a downward rod position for the retrieve. You don't reel the lure back to the boat you jerk it with pauses between jerks and use the reel to only pick up the slack line created by the jerk. When you fish the neutrally buoyant stick bait in this manner the bait just sits still and does not rise or sink at the end of the jerk, the fish can't stand it and will crush the bait and your next jerk often finds a fish on the line and the jerk becomes a hook set. This type of fishing is very good in May and June. Once you learn how, jerk bait fishing is highly addictive. There are no treatment centers for this addiction; the closest cure is Rainy Lake!

X-Rap

I like a 6'6" spinning rod with 6 or 8 pound test monofilament line, the limper the better. I do not use swivels or leaders and yes, I get bit off some, but the amount of strikes outweighs the bite offs. A good rule of thumb on retrieves is the slower and more erratic the better - it is not a race getting the lure back to the boat.

Fish are generally in different moods on given days, negative, neutral, neutral/positive and committing suicide. Jerkbaits come in different actions, highly erratic, wide wobble, medium wobble, and tight wobble. Examples of jerk baits are the following Rapala baits: Minnow Rap (tight wobble), Husky Jerk (medium wobble) and the X-Rap h (highly erratic wide wobble and when jerked). I always pick a starting point with my lure selection. If the weather is chilly, passing front or cold front I start with tight wobble bait like a minnow rap or shad rap and if it works I keep using it. If it does not work I will try a Husky Jerk first and then move on to the X-Rap. Remember, just because one did not work does not mean the next action type won't. I believe the type of action the lure gives is far more important than the lure color. When choosing a color I tend to favor a natural pattern on cloudy days and bright colors on sunny days.

Husky Rap

When any of these lures are trolled it is critical to give them added action by jerking your rod tip forward on a consistent basis. I normally let out about seventy five feet of line and troll from 1.4 -2.2 mph. If you have a GPS it will tell you how fast you are trolling. When you get a strike check your GPS for the speed the fish hit at and continue to use the same speed. Fish will like different baits at different speeds so speed up and slow down until you find the speed that triggers strikes. I try and fish the shores the wind is blowing into when casting or trolling. The easiest shore to fish is the lee shore but it will produce the least amount of fish. Remember the cheapest depth finder you can have for shallow water fishing is a pair of polarized sunglasses!

VNP Winter Activities

Winter is a busy time in Voyageurs National Park providing infrastructure for visitor experiences, planning for the upcoming open water season, wild life studies and, this year, a move to a wonderful new park headquarters located one mile east of International Falls on Highway 11 East.

During the winter months the staff at Voyageurs marks and stakes a huge interconnected system of snowmobile trails. They issue a weekly report on trail conditions including which trails are open and closed. A trail is not opened until the park rangers have measured the thickness of the ice making sure it is safe for park visitors. Another mode of transportation on Rainy Lake in the wintertime is an ice road that is plowed providing almost thirteen miles of ice roads. This year we have had a tremendous amount of snow and the ice did not get a consistent thickness to allow safe road travel.

The moose populations in both Minnesota and Ontario have been declining for the past several years. During the year Voyageurs National Park participates with nine other agencies studying the moose in hope of discovering what is causing this decline. During the past winters they have tagged and collared moose in the park for tracking purposes. Normally they have a net deployed from a helicopter that is thrown over the moose, however, this year the snow was too deep. Instead, the moose were shot with a dart from the helicopter putting it to sleep so the tracking collar could be put around the neck. The moose is then given another shot to awaken it. These moose are tracked by air recording their movements and mortality. There are many ideas out there about the declining population; global warming, predation, increased deer populations, food source issues and changes in hunting seasons not with just moose but black bear also. Black bear populations have increased and in blueberry season the bear scat has had an ever increasing amount of calf moose hair in it. Male bear (boars) seem to feed on young moose calves.

The Voyageurs National Park staff are in the process of packing up their current park headquarters and moving to a brand new building about one mile east of International Falls on the Rainy River. This is an exciting time for visitors coming to our community; you will be able to visit this new headquarters building unlike in the past. All of the maintenance buildings and an amphitheater are also located at this new site. As a reminder, the Rainy Lake Visitors Center of Voyageurs National Park has a new tour boat called the "Voyageur." This forty-nine passenger beauty will have a schedule all summer long with different cruises and destinations on Rainy Lake.