Lake of the Woods Report

I spent the weekend fishing Lake of the Woods with the family.  My son Cole has been asking all year for the chance to catch an Eel Pout.  Eel pout are not in every lake so it takes a little planning to catch one.  After spending years ice fishing Lake of the Woods, the choice of lakes was easy for me.   If we were going to catch him a pout, Lake of the Woods was our best bet.  With a reported hot walleye/sauger bite going on and the chance at an Eel Pout, we decided we would take a road trip to Lake of the Woods.  So, on Friday evening we loaded up the Northern Beer Suburban and DreamShak and headed on our way.

We arrived at the Lake about Midnight and stopped in at Adrians resort to pick up some shiners and pay our road pass.  They were just closing down for the night but we made it just in time.  We then headed out on Adrians Road which is very well marked for travel.  We headed out past all other houses and then started working our way Northwest to a spot on the mud that I like to summer fish in 33 feet of water.  The ice was in very good shape and measured exactly 19.5 inches where we were.  The -7 degree temps on the lake combined with a stiff SE wind made setting up less than desirable but it didn't take long. By 1 AM we were set up with lines down and suprisingly there were a lot of fish showing up on the Humminbird.  Despite not catching any while setting up, it was good to see all the fish activity.

Cole and I woke up and started fishing at 7 AM and the action picked up very quickly.  At first it was tullibee after tullibee and then it soon switched to walleye after walleye.  The set lines were firing constantly with walleye and left very little time to jig.  We spent the entire morning rebaiting rattle reels and catching nice walleye, sometime three at a time.  I made sure I took the time to remind the kids that it doesn't get any better than this.  The action was very consistant until after lunch when it slowed a little.  But, just when it looked like the action was slowing down, we would jig up a nice walleye.  The later it got, the better the jigging bite was.  ON the day we ended up keeping our limit of nice walleye with a few sauger, perch and tullibee. But, besides the fish we kept we released a lot of walleye and sauger that were both to small and to big and on Eel Pout.

Yes, I said Eel Pout.  Cole accomplished his goal on this trip of catching an Eel Pout.  As a dad, it was a nice relief.  Eel POut are certainly hard to target this time of year so it really just becomes a matter of putting your time in, fishing deep water.  Thankfully for us, one decided to cooperate.  We thanked it with a few pictures and then sent it on its way.  It was almost like the perfect ending to a perfect day of fishing but we decided to end it in a better way.  We piled into the Northern Beer Suburban and drove into the Wigwam resort and had them fry up some of our fish.  It was so good, we ate until we were full and headed back to the comfort of the DreamShak.  Now that was the perfect ending to a perfect day!

Sunday we woke up to fishing that was much slower then Saturday.  Saturday we caught roughly 30 walleye between 16 and 22 inches with the majority between 18 and 20 inches.  On Sunday, we caught a couple nice walleye but for the most part, we kept busy with the active Tullibee again.  With the bite being significantly slower we decided to relocate our camp to Leech Lake so that we were closer to home. Leech Lake would still give us a chance to fish yet only have a 2 hour ride home in the AM, so that is what we did.

We set up in Walker Bay on Leech Lake on 14.5 inches of ice.  This was enough to drive the Northern Suburban and DreamShak on so we were able to get set up very fast.  Unforately the bite was not that great for us.  We caught a few very small walleye and lost two nicer fish on the rattle reels but that was it.  We packed up and headed home very early in the AM but once again it was a great weekend.