Petenwell this Saturday

Gonna make a trip up and hit Petenwell this Saturday, been awful quiet on here, hasn’t anyone been out? How’s the ice, looking to go out of the Lure or maybe the county park??? Not really sure…. any suggestions? I’ve got an older non 1′ contour lakemaster so figure we’ll just head out to the channel and set up.. Anyone going to be out there Saturday stop by, should be 4 guys and a huge black lab running around… old brown polaris with milk crates on the front.
Also where to get bait? the place on Z and 21? would like to find some emerald shiners if possible too.

Al,
I haven’t done any ice fishing there this year, but I own a cabin on Pete and have been fishing it during open water for 50 years. Best place for bait is Petenwell Sports Shop, corner of Bighorn and Z. Good bait and current reports. Good luck!

I didn’t fish it last weekend but have fished most weekends prior. Two weeks ago I measured 17″ of ice where we were fishing. We have been going off of Petenwell county park, which is just down from the sportshop on bighorn. Petenwell sports shop would be my recommendation for bait.

Find the channel edge and fish the bottom and top of the break. I have not figured out any real solid pattern as to when they are shallow or deep. Just lay down a pile of holes and see where the fish are.

We made it out last Saturday, got a late start, didn’t get on the lake till almost 10am. Stopped and grabbed some bait from Petenwell Sport Shop and headed to the Lure. We unloaded the bike and rolled out on the lake, went out about 3/4 mile and found a channel edge to set up on. Fired up the old Jiffy and started punching holes, there was four of us so we were able to cover some ground. Set up 3 BD tipups, 3 wind tipups, a hookset tipup and an auto-fisherman. We set up from 8 fow on top out to about 18fow in the channel, used small and med fatheads, rosie reds, and shiners. Only had two flags, one on a wind tipup with a fathead that took a couple feet of line and dropped it. The other flag was on a BD with a shiner on top of the break, my son got the channel cat in the pic, prolly 22″ or so.. That was it for flags, we’d move tipups around every 45 min to hour, some we varied depth, some moved to new holes. Not much action on those.
We also jigged too, tried everything in the box, from forage minnows to slender spoons, also quite a few different colored pimples, jigging raps, a few chubby darters and ALOT of different jigs tipped with plastics and/or waxies or spikes… I missed a couple lite bites then landed my first fish of the day…a 6″ walleye sorry no pics.. Just a little while later got an 8″ crappie out of the same hole, both fish on a gold/orange forage minnow with a minnow head. About an hour later had huge red mark come up and slammed my jig, I set the hook, about 4 feet of line peeled off then it was snagged up… don’t know how or what but ended up having to but my line and lost my forage minnow … Right before dark my buddie jigged up a 16″ walleye to end the day with. Cell phone pics not the greatest, but all we had. Also snapped a sunset pic too, it was a beutiful day out, didn’t set the world on fire slamming fish but had a blast with some friends, grilled a few johnsonvilles and had a few