Lake of the Woods Update

I spent a portion of this Holiday weekend fishing Lake of the Woods.  After losing a hometown friend to a heart attack this past week, it was nice to get away and get back to fishing.  With very poor reports from the lake I was not sure what to expect when we finally hit the ice Saturday evening.

After only getting on the ice at 3:00 PM Saturday evening I was surprised to see to two fish on my Humminbird ICE 55 when I dropped the transducer down the hole.  After all, the reports I was getting on the drive up from guys fishing was terrible.  As soon as I dropped my #2 Red Glow Demon Jigging spoon tipped with the head of a minnow down the hole I had two walleye chasing up for it.  For those that don't fish much, this is a great sign as usually indicated the bite is "on".  Instantly I had a nice 17 inch walleye on the ice, and then another and it didn't stop there.

Matt Carlander was fishing with me this weekend and it didn't take him long to get in on the action.  In fact, after a flurry of action for 10 minutes we had already kept 3 nice walleye and 1 jumbo perch.  After two hours of fishing we had caught 23 fish and were able to keep our limit of nice walleye, a couple of sauger and had one 22 incher that was released.  The action was really good for the short time we were able to fish.  At about 5:30 we packed it up and headed on in to Wheelers Point where we were staying.

At Wheeler's Point  we met up with some friends and got to enjoy a great fish fry and we were excited to get back out on the ice the next day.  The fish we found were very active and usually will stick around the area for a few days when you find them like we did.

Sunday we were greeted by warm temps again and a nice mix of sun and clouds.  With the conditions very similar to the day before we were looking forward to another great bite. However, it didn't take long to figure out things had changed quite a bit.  Gone was the bait we were marking on the Humminbird's and gone were the fish for the most part.  Despite drilling quite a few holes over a large area of Mud we just could not locate the bait and fish we were "on" the day before.  So, back to reality it was.  We still caught 22 fish on the day but were only able to keep 6 of those.

So what changed?  Well when you are on the schools of bait and the walleye are chasing up and down the water column the bite can be excellent.  Most of Saturday evenings fish bit 8-12 feet under the ice over 32 feet of water.  On Sunday, that high riding bait was gone and so were those active walleye that were chasing them around.  The good news is we still had a great time, got to have a great meal of fish and a lot of fun with friends, which in the end is what it is all about.  It is always nice to get back up to Lake of the Woods and visit with the friends I made when I lived up there.