Its game on! Most lakes in the area are good to go for foot travel. Under stand the ice is cloudy and isn’t pure so it will be not as strong as black ice. Some areas had 3 inches of ice a little water and then 3 inches ice under that. Most of the ice is 5-8 inches. Be safe and don’t push your luck. I am going out tomorrow fishing gills and pies and we will see what happens. Can’t stop the chase!
We smoked them! We went on a local lake for blue gills and crappies and had a field day. We caught easily 60 fish in the morning. We caught 4-6 blue gills from 10-10.5 and caught a couple crappies that were in the 10-11 inch range and I lost one that was around 13. All the fish were caught on waxies.
The fish wanted your jigs still, jig a couple times and completely stop it. We set a bobber with a waxie and had a lot of luck on that. We set up off of a sunken island. The island tops out at 6-8 feet and we were fishing in that 12-17 foot area in between the sunken island and deeper water (20-25). Our average gill was 9 inches. Blue was a good color along with pink. We used Northland Mud Bug but any small jig would work. Again having that jig perfectly still as they came up was key. On this particular lake the bite shuts down at 9:30am. You can still get fish but your size goes way down and your eater fish become one every 30-45min and not every 5-10.
I have tried everything to stay on that bite all day and I think I know what happens. They don’t go deep, they bury them selves in the weeds on the sunken island and they are done eating until the evening. The good bite only went from about 730-930. We caught some small crappies in the dark before the sun came up and once and a while mixed with the gills.
I should also mention tungsten seemed almost to heavy for the fish to suck the jigs in on this particular day. We had a lot of fun and kept some fish for dinner. Not bad for being done by noon.
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Went to my favorite lake for pike today. Me and a friend only fished for the morning looking for a 45incher. What we caught 5 with the biggest at 33ish inches but it was a fat mama. The others were nice 3 pound fish we kept three.
We jigged one rod and had an I fish Pro each. What we found is they didn’t want anything jigging. So we switched to bobbers and the i fish pros. We missed probably 4 fish one that was hefty. The hot bait was a gold with orange tape sweedish pimple in the biggest size under the i fish pro. I truly believe we would have done well if we lasted until 1 but life called at 11. We still had a awesome time out on the water even though that 45 (which there is plenty in this lake) didn’t come. My final goal of the ice fishing season is to ice a 45 on a local lake without having to go to a destination lake.
CAN’T STOP THE CHASE!
hear is the big one for the day
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Well there is a lot of good lakes around and many that have been hit and fished out. We don’t have to many big lakes around to handle the fishing pressure that is in the area. Bob lake is a perfect example of the crappie bite getting into the wrong ears and destroying the crappie fishing. There was a time where it would just be my brother, my cousin and I out there. It would be rare to see one guy out there. We would catch 13-15 inchers consistently. Then all the sudden you saw 20 people all in the crappie hole and two years of that and now all you catch is 4-7 inch crappies. It has happened to many lakes around so if you find good spots you tend to keep them to yourself. However no matter if you are in Cloquet Cromwell or down by Moose Lake you can catch nice crappie and bluegills in a lot of the lakes. I will give you two Big Sandy and Fish lake they are just outside of carlton county but very good fishing and are big enough to with stand a good beating. Good luck
CANT STOP THE CHASE!
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