Jan 26-27 Report

Fished the end of Adrian’s Road on Saturday 1/26 and Sunday 1/27. The ICE35 showed 34′ and the ducer was down through the ice so we must have been out in the 36′ mud depth. Was up with my Dad and we caught 19 fish each day. Not fast and furious but enough to keep you going.

Of the 38 fish I would guess about 9 were over 19 1/2″ with the biggest at 24″. Another 8 were saugers or walleye 10″ or less. I caught one perch each day, nice fish around 12″ each. Only 1 tulibee this trip. The others were nice eater size saugers 13 – 16″ and walleyes 15 – 19″. We ate very well thanks to the Wigwam and also got to bring some home.

Based on some tips I read online we stopped on the way up to buy shiners as I’ve read they are next to impossible to come by around LOTW. Found some golden shiners at the gas station / bait shop in Turtle River and Emerald shiners at the West Wind Resort in Waskish. The smaller emerald shiners seemed to be the best bait for us by a long shot followed by the golden shiners and we also caught a couple on fatheads. Northland Red Glowfish was our hot color. We did have a flurry late Sunday when we caught several nice walleyes on frozen shiners on disco ball jigs.

Hope this helps someone. Good luck up there!

nice report looks like it was a good weekend.

I question that you purchased emerald shiners at west wind. I not only stopped there on my way up last weekend and then I called after reading your post to confirm that there are some loose ends to your report. They told me that they have NOT had emerald shiners all season. I did manage to track shiners down on my way up. They were not emeralds nor goldens but some type of silver shiner and we had greater success with 3 1/2″ to 4″ shiners for our bigger fish. The little shiners tended to draw smaller fish if any at all. Thus being the reason I feel your over 19 1/2″ numbers are a little stretched. I was also fishing on adrians and in that depth. So with that being said and your stretch on the shiners makes me question the credibility to the rest of your report. I caution users on these blogs for these reasons. Take what you read with a grain of salt. People that do this take away the credibility of these boards that we go to for some help in bettering our trip and our over all experience. And the people that try to abuse it need to be challenged. Happy fishing to all!!

IceWhiskey, I can assure you that my report was intended to help and not to deceive anyone.

I will grant you that I am not an expert in shiner identification. I know that the shiners I purchased in Turtle River were not Emerald Shiners and I guessed them to be Golden Shiners. At the bait shop they were labeled simply “shiners”.

From your discussion with the West Wind I am inferring that the shiners I purchased there were not Emerald Shiners either. They too were labeled simply “shiners”. I guess I did not realize how many different types of shiners there were.

I did also purchase “shiners” from the West Wind on a late December trip to Upper Red. Fatheads outperformed shiners by a large margin that trip.

In the future I will try to give an estimated length to the baitfish rather than just saying “small”. A 2 1/2″ – 3″ shiner was pretty small in the batch we had.

The “end of Adrian’s Road” is a large area and there are certainly plenty of other variables. As for the rest of my report, I stand behind it.

Thanks for the report not sure what the negativity is all about.