Brett McComas from  Target Walleye was featured on the Fish House Nation Podcast after returning from a wheelhouse trip on Lake Winnipeg.  From the fishing to the food and beyond, this was a trip to be remembered, even from a guy like McComas who has pursued walleyes in just about every place you can imagine.  Chris Larsen is the host of the show and you can see the interview by clicking here, or check out the transcript of the show below. 

Chris Larsen:

I saw your email and saw  the video about Lake Winnipeg and a Yeti Fish House. That's something you don't see very often. I've had the Brewer-Agre guys on the show, talking about Lake Winnipeg before, but they do a run and gun style of fishing. And when you think of Winnipeg, that's what you think of. But you guys were up there in a wheelhouse. Tell us a little bit about that.

Brett McComas:

You know, that was new to me, too. I've been to Winnipeg numerous times. This was my first time ever staying on the ice. Really, it was the first time I ever stayed put and did not do the run & and hole-hopping thing. I've been following this guy on Instagram for years. His name is Kris Gaune, and he immediately caught my attention when he posted a picture of a big greenback walleye in a wheelhouse. You just don't see that. I immediately started following him. And I'm just like, one day, I am going up there and link up with him. I have to experience that because wheelhouse life doesn't get any better. Combine a shot at a 10-pound greenback, and I'm in! That dude is dialed. He has the ski systems for the wheels and a big ol’ track machine. I think he has three fish houses now out there. The bite was phenomenal. Being able to cook some steaks and burgers, fry fish, and be there for those early morning bites when it's still dark out or twilight and evening. We even caught fish after dark. One of the first nights, it was just coming off a full moon, and we had rattle reels dinging at night. One of our best bite windows was 11 p.m. when people were long gone off the lake, and you do not hear a lot about that. I am trying to get the word out about it now that I have experienced it. I wanted to wait until I got up there and got to try it. It was wild.

Chris Larsen:

What is the wheelhouse culture like up there? Again, we just don't hear about Lake Winnipeg and a wheelhouse. How many wheelhouses do you see out there?

Brett McComas:

There are a couple of homemade DIY shanties or little permanent skid houses. Because ice travel is so difficult, you don't see people hooking up and pulling a fish house with their truck out there. You must have the track machine and the skis for them. Those are big-ticket items that a lot of people don't have access to, but some people are starting to. The first two days, we barely saw another human being. It was 40 mile per hour winds. On that lake, that south basin is 40 to 50 miles across. You might think you can get around anywhere you want in your truck, and three minutes later, you're buried because you got a 40-mile-per-hour wind blowing any snow on that side of the lake all the way across. All the days we were there, Kris was getting calls and texts and going on rescue missions, pulling out people who were stuck in snow bears and Suburbans. I felt guilty because I was sitting on a leather couch with a 50-inch TV with a live scope hooked up to it, fireplace cooking, crushing coffee, and catching greenbacks. I went outside to fill the generator up, and I did not even realize there were 40-mile-per-hour winds because I hadn't been outside yet. Man, was I thankful to be in there!

Chris Larsen:

It can get nasty out there! Tell us a little about what it's like going from the Brainerd area to Winnipeg. What are the travel conditions like, and what's the border crossing like right now?

Brett McComas:

You know, I have not been up there in a few years now. It was my first trip back up, and it made me a little nervous. But it couldn't have gone any smoother. The border crossing was a thirty-second thing for me. The roads were smooth traveling. It took about seven hours for me to get from Brainerd to the access where we were fishing. It was six-ish hours to get up to Selkirk, where we stayed on the way up, which is just 30 minutes north of Winnipeg. It just made me think, why don't I do this more often? It's far enough that you think it's a big ordeal, but it's also close enough that you could zip up there after work on a Friday, and you would get up there late, but you'd be up there. And in my head, I always remember it like this 10- or 12-hour trek, spending a whole day. It's not that bad, it's not that far, and to have a shot at the fish of a lifetime is incredible. The border crossing went smoothly. Everything went smoothly. I just made sure I didn't bring any potatoes or my own bait.

Chris Larsen:

So, you get up there in the evening, and right away, you're with Nick Linder. That video is on the Target Walleye YouTube channel. Go check it out if you don't subscribe to the email. If you don't subscribe to the email, you really should. Nick bags a huge one right off the bat as you guys get going.

Brett McComas:

I'm still speechless about that. I didn't even catch it, and at that moment, I was like, this trip is set. I'm good. We met him at the access at 6:30 a.m. to get an early start that day. We're unloading gear and don't even have gear put away yet. But he had the house warm, holes open, and live scope on, and as we were setting gear down, there were two fish on the graph. There's three, then there's one; look at the size of that one! It's like, maybe we should take a little break from putting gear away. Because there's obviously fish crawling around all over the place. So we dug the rods out of the rod case. Sure enough, as I was walking into the fish house with some fish batter (you know, that's high hopes: I'm already thinking about cooking fish, and we haven't fished yet), and as I stepped into the house, I saw this giant mark getting vertical. Normally, they are swimming. I'm looking and wondering, what's going on? And then I realized Nick's rattle bait was right there. This thing is just vertical on him. He sets the hook, and the rod stops. And I'm just, is this real life?! Because he set the hook into a rock. It was his first 30-incher. We weighed it quickly. It was 11.55 pounds and that beautiful green hue. Man, to catch that first 30. I've never caught a 30, and it's the first thing everybody asks you. It's always, "You haven't caught a 30-inch walleye". You'll get a shot at it, but I've been going up there for many years and haven't got a 30. You get 28s and whatever, huge fish. I mean, he was fishing for five minutes and caught that thing. Unbelievable. You can't even make it up. Luckily, we had a couple of GoPro's set up because we've learned that if you don't do that first, you're going to miss something crazy. Always happens instantly on every trip.

Chris Larsen:

So, you guys had the big 30. Let's talk about the size structure. You said you could go out and catch the 28s, but what about eater fish? Are you guys able to get into some eater fish as well?

Brett McComas:

Half the fish we caught were perfect eaters. Right now, if you have a normal license, you can keep six fish, but only one can be an over, about 21 point-something inches. Half the fish we caught were in that great 18-inch eater range. The other half of the fish we caught, at least in the spot we were in, were 22.5 to 23 inchers. And up there, that's a four-pound fish. They're this big around. And half, or even better, of the fish we caught, were just those beasts fighting so hard that you don't know if it's a 27. It just, it's incredible. You always have a shot at a big one. I got one that we didn't really measure. We were in a hustle. It was flirting with that mass triangular size, like a 28. 

We should have weighed it, really. It was so fat. It could have been a 10-pounder, but you think it's not a 30. You know, everybody gets that 30 number in their head. It's got to be a 30. Well, I have a fish on the wall. I don't know if you can see it. That was my first 30 incher. It probably didn't weigh seven pounds. Up there, you can catch a 27-incher that weighs more than that and is the fish of a lifetime. But we got plenty of eaters and had a couple of fish fries. It's kind of cool. You catch enough of those big fish that, at one point, you're getting excited. There's another 17 or 18-incher. Boom, back-to-back fish tacos. There's a really nice mixture of size range. We got everything from that to 30 and all the different classes in between. But the number of 23 inchers in there right now is pretty wild.

Chris Larsen:

Tell me a little bit about that night-bite again. That's not something that most people experience. What was the night bite like out there?

Brett McComas:

Every day was a little different. There was one night when we caught nothing after dark. There was another night when our best bite window was 10 or 11 o'clock, and we were still grabbing big fish at 12 and 1. It was weird how every single night was different. I'm so used to the central Minnesota area, where you can dial it down to the minute. 30 minutes at sunrise and sunset. If you're doing that after-dark bite, it's usually from 9 to 9:45: I will have a window and catch maybe one. It was weird how every single day, the bite window was different for both daytime and nighttime. We would stay up as late as we could if we were still graphing fish and catching them on rattle baits, and it slowed down a little bit as far as their mood. Finally, we set some rattle reels. It's so weird catching fish on barbless hooks on a rattle reel after dark, but you really don't lose many. We did number four and six treble hooks, barbs pinched, with a mud minnow. And that's fine by me. If you've ever fished with a mud minnow, that thing will sit there and kick for four days. I wish I could get them around here. I hook them through the top of the back or the tail on that treble hook. I ran a 20-pound rattle reel line on those  Catch Cover Rattlesnake reels. I did a 14-pound flouro leader because I wanted a little oomph since the drag is your hand. I missed only one or two fish on the hook set, and they probably had already dropped it. I never had any fish come off while fighting them. I don't think we lost a fish on that trip because of barbless.

Chris Larsen:

Tell me a little bit about the structure. Are you just fishing a flat? How deep is the water?

Brett McComas:

It reminds me of Manitoba's version of Red Lake but with bigger fish and water. It's a real gradual break. We were in about 10 feet of water, which is a little bit shallow. Many people fish out in that 12-foot stuff, but they've been having a really good shallow bite all year. And you're looking for the kind of areas that are holding the most fish. It's like Red Lake, where if you're drilling holes and not seeing fish, go a quarter mile or a half mile and drill another hole. You're looking for those kinds of areas holding pods of fish. I didn't have to do any of that on this trip. It was glorious. Kris did all the hard work. That was a nice change of pace.

We were in about 10 feet of water. It was a silty, muddy bottom. Almost everyone up there is focusing on the maze of creeks and rivers. In this late ice period, these fish are super fat. Actually, that 30-incher, you could see eggs coming out of it when we were releasing it after a couple quick photos. These fish are getting ready for the spawn, and they're moving from the main Lake Winnipeg basin and pushing to that south end where the Red River dumps in. It's an annual migration they call March Madness up there. Soon, they'll be catching them from the boat in the Red River. Right now, it congregates fish roaming that massive body of water.

There are tons of fish out in that 20, 20-foot-plus stuff. They never see bait, never see a person. To stay on, it'd have to be one dude with a live unit, scanning and running gun repeatedly. You could be rewarded for that for sure, but you start getting the melt and fish moving, migrating down to those rivers that dump in. Even if it's just a little creek with some moving water, it helps narrow the search. You can set up shop in a hub house or wheelhouse and wait for them to come to you.

Chris Larsen:

One of the things I saw is you guys are fishing some pretty aggressive fish. I was watching you talk about those walleyes going vertical. I was watching the walleyes go vertical and chasing your bait all the way up the water.

Brett McComas:

That is something that I have not seen in very many places. Literally, they get vertical coming up. It wasn't always like that. It showed some of the coolest interactions of the fish. We definitely had days and times when they acted like walleyes. They were tighter to the bottom. They were slowly coming in. If you hit the rattle bait, they turn around and go the other way. There are a couple of different moods of fish, depending on the day. We always had a rattle reel down. It's funny how some of those fish would come in. They could care less about the rattle bait; they'd go straight for that minnow and take off, and boom, bonus catch. Some of them, you couldn't jig hard enough. They couldn’t care less about a live minnow on a plain hook with a fluorocarbon leader. It'd swim right past it to go to something that's moving, bright, and gaudy. What they wanted changed hour by hour and day by day.

There were really good bite windows; sometimes, you'd go a couple hours and get turned down a few times. We were constantly changing baits. That rattlebait bite is obviously by far my favorite. It's the rattle bait capital of the world for walleyes for ice fishing. I always tend to start there and work backward. If I get turned down, I go into a lipless crankbait that doesn't have rattles to see how they react. It reminds me of a jigging wrap-ribbon wrap hybrid. It's silent but still has a little vibration. If they eat that, I stick with it. If I get turned down, I go to the jigging spoons. But the nice thing about having that rattle reel down is that you can keep the big fun stuff in your hand longer, knowing you have that backup plan.

Chris Larsen:

You told me a little bit about the setup of your rattle reels. Tell me about the rods, lines, and things you were using on your jigging rods.

Brett McComas:

I beefed everything up going up there. I was using a 38-inch Tuned-Up Custom Rod Vulcan, which is a meaty, big fish-predator fish rod. It's a glass rod with many shock absorbers and a backbone. I was running mono on both setups; I weighed 10 pounds on that one because I wanted a little bit of that stretch in the system between the rod, which was that glass mod fast action, and the mono line. Having that shock absorber was super nice because you're in shallow water with big fish and barbless hooks. You need something in the system to give a little bit, but you need to keep constant pressure because the second you lose it is when they can throw the hooks. I liked having that Vulcan in my hand because I was in control. I could tell which way the fish was going to go. And you'll see on those live scope clips how fast I get those fish right up to the hole. If you wait a second longer, you get into trouble. As soon as they start getting perpendicular to the hole, you can't get their head turned up because it's so shallow. 

That's where you lose all your fish with barbless hooks because you can't get them turned up with that steep angle. I was leaning into them and getting them up. I was using smaller baits like the slab wraps on number six. I was also using a Tune-Up Custom Rods Commander, and by Minnesota standards, it's a really beefy rod. It's a notch down from that Vulcan, but extra fast, medium heavy. You've got to have that power because you never know if it's going to be a 33-incher that weighs 14 pounds or an 18-inch eater. I just bumped everything up on that setup. With my lighter setup, I had an eight-pound mono. I still did a 10 or 12-pound fluorocarbon leader because I like a stiffer leader: the baits follow less. If you get in that situation where they're in the hole, or you're trying to turn them, having that beefier fluorocarbon leader is nice insurance. I'll use that little swivel as a point to hold onto when I'm trying to get them turned up or trying to slide them into your hand to land them when they come up so hot. If you get them up in the hole and 10 feet of water in a few seconds, they realize they're hooked, and the fight is on.

Chris Larsen:

So, you talked about Minnesota. Something that would drive me nuts when I hunt is when people go out West during the rut here. That's like leaving on your trip when the hunt is really good here. And the cool thing about this trip is that in March, you'll be hard-pressed to find a place to catch walleyes in Minnesota. You guys left at a time to go chase these big walleyes when you can't do it in Minnesota. Talk about that timing and how that works out for you.

Brett McComas:

The only thing that made me hesitant was that the burbot spawn was in full go during the daytime bite, and I block that off my calendar every year. I don't want to be anywhere but there. That's why we chose when we did. The week prior was the best burbot bite. The rest of the game fish season is closed as of February 26; what other options do you have to set the hook and catch a fish that fights back? You can sneak out and do some burbot fishing, chase panfish, or drive seven hours and catch a new personal best walleye through four feet of ice. It's really cool. The bite gets really good up there in March, with all the fish starting to push towards the creek mouth and river mouth. It's a double whammy. Our seasons are closed; theirs are open, and fishing and the weather is getting better. They catch plenty of fish in January and even in February. You just might not be doing the rattle-bait thing. You might be doing more spoons, but even slow fishing by Manitoba standards is pretty good.

Chris Larsen:

If you're just a junkie for it and you want to go out and do it right now. That was a good idea to get out there and experience something different and really experience some world-class fishing. One of the things I saw in the video is that a few other times, you're wrestling fish and the laptops up on the countertop. Are you doing work while you're out there?

Brett McComas:

I could not believe we actually had Wi-Fi! He's got something called Starlink in one of his houses and something similar in the other. And it was insane. I was unprepared for that and couldn't have been more thankful to get some work done. But it was hard because I think my biggest fish of the trip came when I was working on a Target Walleye email. I kept being distracted watching the big screen and seeing this little flicker on the bottom that looked like just a minnow or something. Just in case, I slipped the laptop over on the table, brought the rod around, and shook the rattle bait a few times. What do you know, the little minnow suddenly started getting big. That was the middle of the day, catching a 27, 28-inch, 10-pound walleye while working on the computer hooked up to Wi-Fi. I could do this every day. That's a way better office than this one!

Chris Larsen:

You guys were eating pretty good out there, too. Tell me about some of the meals.

Brett McComas:

Ridiculous. Kris is a heck of a cook and did an incredible fish fry. He's got a buddy who owns a barbecue shop. It's called Big Smoke BBQ. He had burnt ends and all the sides in these bags that you boil. You boil a pot of water, put these burnt ends in a bag, and let them soak in the water for 20 minutes. You'd swear they just came out of the smoker after 12 hours. That was a special treat and opened my eyes to the ease of meals. You can have burnt ends; all you have to do is boil water, and you don't have to clean up a pan or anything. We also had to throw a couple big one-pound ribeye's on there. That's a wheelhouse tradition for me. Burgers, bacon and eggs in the morning, etc. We came back a lot heavier than when we left for this trip.

Chris Larsen:

They put those bumper stickers on the back of those wheelhouses that say “Heavier Out”.

Brett McComas:

Yes, exactly, it's got to be one of the reasons.

Chris Larsen:

The other thing I wanted to ask you about is the video is pretty much shot starring you. You don't have a whole lot of Nick in there. Is there another version coming out that's got some Nick in it?

Brett McComas:

Yeah, and he probably caught more fish than I did. He's going to have his own video and that's why you just saw a little preview of that 30-incher. I didn't want to steal all his limelight with the fights and the hook sets, but actually, when he cut that 30, within 10 minutes after that, he also caught like a 24, 25-incher. It was just boom, boom, boom. He's going to have another video coming out with a bunch of his catches. I've also got a couple more coming out. That one was just one of the days. Another one of the days will be in the next video I'll be posting that was a little bit tougher bite. And that's when we had to switch tactics and get rid of some rattles for part of the day. You'll see that one coming next.

Chris Larsen:

I appreciate you coming on the show. Is there something that you wanted to talk about that I didn't ask you about today?

Brett McComas:

No, Chris, I really appreciate the opportunity to chat about fishing, and time flies when we do; it's always good to chat with you. I watch all the podcasts. I would jump on here in a heartbeat anytime to talk fishing with you.

Chris Larsen:

I appreciate it. Hey, do you need a new coffee maker?

Brett McComas:

You did watch the video until the end! That's what happens when you have a 50-inch TV with a live scope hooked up to it. I put the French press lid on my little flash pot because I didn't want to go boil water. He has a Keurig in there, so I could have just done that and pressed a button. But I wanted to be fancy and use my little flash cooker, and I forgot to turn it off. I put the French press in there, put the lid on, and got distracted by the big screen. I left that thing ripping with the lid on, and boom! I went through a whole roll of paper towels and wiped off all the fish house walls before I even wiped off my computer, cameras, and everything. The thing happened to explode.

Chris Larsen:

You've got to check out this video, but it's funny how everyone in the wheelhouse world loves French press coffee. When I first bought it, my wife asked, "Well, why don't you make me French press coffee at home?" I have to go fishing to get it.

Brett McComas:

It's like a special treat. It's like I was saying; I bring steaks out to the wheelhouse for one night every time. You do the French press. It feels manly making my coffee in a way that doesn't have a filter.

Chris Larsen:

Good stuff. Well, Brett McComas from Target Walleye. Thanks so much for coming on the show.