Spent this last weekend up at Lake of the Woods with friends and family, a total of 8 guy in our party.
We were on the fence right up until the last minute Wed night as to whether we would bring sleds or wheelers as our mode of transportation on the lake. I had called the hotel Wednesday and they only had a couple inches of snow at noon and not much more when I called again at 4:30 and it was supposed to quit at some point Wed night so we opted for 4 wheelers. That ended up being a HUGE mistake…..it snowed all night Wed night AND all day Thursday AND a good chunk of Thurs night.
We were still able to get around okay but sleds would have been WAY easier and much faster.
As for the fishing….it was okay….not as good as past years for us but we had fun.
Thursday afternoon we targeted an area of the open basin that we heard some good reports from and we were able to scrounge together a few fish most were small and were released but we managed a few nice eaters.
Fri morning we woke up to clear star filled skies so we were optimistic. We ventured out with the plan of making a 20+ mile run to the reefs on the north end of the lake. We got a good early start and were treated to a wonderful sunrise as we were making our way across the lake. We got to the reef we wanted to fish and got right at making swiss cheese out of the ice covering an area from the top to the bottom of the reef for the 8 of us to fish. We started catching fish right away but again most were on the small side but we were able to put together a nice mixed batch of Walleye and Sauger for a fish fry Friday night. Unfortunately one of the wheelers blew an oil line and needed to be towed back so it was slow going on the way in and we didn’t hit the sack until almost midnight by the time we got done with our fish fry and fixing the 4 wheeler.
Sat morning we woke to a balmy 7 below zero but once again it was beautiful clear skies. We hit the trail a little light in our group since most of the guys didn’t want a wake up call #-o but 3 of us were up and at it. We got to a different reef we had heard had been producing and picked a good looking spot on the GPS with the lakemaster chip, a nice little point with 2 good inside turns and a little flat. We punched a bunch of holes and started hole hopping, thankfully by the time we got out to our spot it had warmed up considerably so it was actually nice being outside. This reef is a pretty popular place and we figured we’d fish it until it got too crowded or the fishing slowed conveniently that happened about the same time. I do have to say though…the stupidity of people never ceases to amaze me. We had a group of 9 trucks drive right through the middle of the holes we had drilled actually driving between me and one of the other guys in our group we were probably 15-20 yards from each other. Apparently they didn’t like where they ended up so they drove back through between us again with the last truck spinnin his tires and sliding back and forth…apparently he thought he was cool. There was NO ONE on the outside of us so I am not sure why they didn’t just go around. Not too long after that we had a snowmobile run through our little spread and actually right between our 4 wheelers which were parked probably 20-25 feet apart, there was a hole there and we had a nice 18″ walleye lying there on top of the snow and this guy ran it over with his sled. Had he not rejoined his group and left the reef we would have shared some pleasantries with him. Fed up with the classless acts we bailed and tried another reef that we could see was very quiet with only 1 house on it….we tried that for an hour and figured out why no one was there…no fish. We ventured back to the spot we fished Friday and popped the holes back open and started catching fish right away mostly small but we did get a few more nice eaters. We had it to ourselves so we just stuck it out there the rest of the day.
All three days our primary presentation was jigging spoons with minnow heads but we also caught a few fish on Salmo Chubby Darters and jiggin Raps. We found fish at different depths on the reefs from near the top to off the bottom edge. The biggest fish for the weekend was a 6 pound eelpout, it would have been nice had some bigger walleyes showed themselves but not this year.
All in all it was a good trip, weather and fishing could have been better but the group of guys that went made it a great time.