Devils Lake report (Jan 8-9)/Woodlands

My son (14) and I tried our first trip to Devils Lake over the weekend, out of Woodlands. We’d had mixed luck at best on LOTW last few years so figured we’d try Devils.

My son has a broken right hand so we knew we’d have some challenges going in. And to top it off the temperature and pressure change right when we arrived (bad timing for sure) didn’t help.

That said, we had a good time. Scratched 5 ok eye keepers Friday, and limit on Saturday. Nothing huge, biggest about 18″. But enough to keep us interested. I was pretty impressed with Woodlands overall. A guy can always hope you’re moved more when the fishing gets slow but they stopped by to check on us, gave us advice, and to a man, everyone was very friendly and helpful. I’ll definitely try Woodlands again in the future. The drive is a pain, but it was 4-lane whole way for us (from southern MN), so basically same distance as a trip to LOTW for us.

Resort is clean and well run. The fish cleaning station is the best I’ve seen.

I think if a guy had paid extra for guides etc., it would have boosted our chances but we were on a budget so did best we could. I did see some catches of healthy big jumbo perch from other groups on guided trips etc.

Anyway, great time had in N.D.

Tight lines.

Thanks for the report! Got a group of us heading up there on Wednesday the 13th. Needless to say today and I’m sure tomorrow are going to go by very slowly! Were you able to drive on the ice, or did they transport you to the shack?

We weren’t able to drive out. They were transporting everyone. And it was pretty close to the resort both days so pretty short transport.

That said, it may be ok for pickups by the time you guys get there with all this recent cold weather.

Good luck! Try a small jigging rap. We had luck on several lures with minnows, but had a blast catching some on the jigging rap.

Will definitely have to try that. Thanks for the info!

I was there on 1/2 and 1/3 with my wife, we would have 1 rod as a deadstick/slip bobber soaking a minnow and jigging another rod. Seem like they preferred anything that was perch colored or green with red in it.

We also liked the resort and will be back in future years

We were also there on 1/2 and 1/3 and will go back, very clean and well run. From 4 to 5:30 pm was our best time for walleyes, only caught about 10 perch throughout the day. The most walleyes were caught on the smallest firetiger puppet minnow with a whole minnow either tail hooked or in under the dorsal fin, with a few taken on #4 pink uv rippin rap. Stump lake was one place the guides were getting the jumbos.

fishtoeat wrote:

We were also there on 1/2 and 1/3 and will go back, very clean and well run. From 4 to 5:30 pm was our best time for walleyes, only caught about 10 perch throughout the day. The most walleyes were caught on the smallest firetiger puppet minnow with a whole minnow either tail hooked or in under the dorsal fin, with a few taken on #4 pink uv rippin rap. Stump lake was one place the guides were getting the jumbos.

I’m guessing you were the group we talked to in the fish cleaning house, my wife took pictures for your group. We fished on Stump the 1st day and did very good on perch. The 2nd day in the house thru Woodland, we had good action in the morning from 7:30 to 10AM, then it was the dead sea until 3:30, then good action until we packed up at 5:30

Yes, that was us. Thanks again for taking our group photos and it was nice talking with you guys.