Guys Im looking for some help ice fishing Lake Pepin. I dont want to know your hot spots. I have never ice fished it. Im looking for info from others who have fished it. I know it is a wide part of the the Mississippi river. What are the ice conditions what should I look out for and how is the fishing during the winter. I would like to be able to take a SxS out. Any issues. How thick is the ice. Any places to stay away from?
Thank you
Bob
what species are you targetting
Where do you plan to go out of?
Ok first off fishing can be very good. It also is a lake that will kick your@$$ figuring it out.
It’s a river river =moving water. Stay away from points. Points have thin ice. Cuz bottom pushes water up and also usually a neck down spot on the lake. Lots of creeks and such run into the lake so traveling close to shore is more risky than the middle.
There are many good areas for walleye and sauger. Usually good early and late in the day. There is no night bite. Once it dark go home.. There are lots of good pan fish spots. Also some good pike spots. Most of these spots once you find them you’ll have to yourself. Lots of spots are just hard to access and unless it’s a good ice year. Not many venture out to far.
It’s one of my favorite. Lakes to ice fish. But I’ve spent years learning spots. And have had my but handed to me many many days trying new spots.
Ice is good in low current areas. If your not sure drill and check as you go..
Good luck
Without reinventing the wheel…
I’d go back to the Mississippi River forums and look for the winter dated threads.
There’s a ton of posts from previous years amd nothing has changed.
The main lake is terrible but there are some spots that produce.
Read the other posts and you’ll get all the info you’ll need to start.
Benelli-bob
I will chime in here a bit and let you know what we are hearing in the bait shop. Success has been had by guys chasing Perch, Walleyes and Pike although most have been struggling to find fish. Most of the guys who I’ve had a chance to talk to have related the struggle to not being able to punch many holes / move around due to the brutal temps. I expect the bite and the reports to be much better after this weekend.
As far as where to fish: Maiden Rock (Wisconsin Side) and the Frontenac area on the Minnesota side. These are also the most known areas of the lake and the first spots with good ice. Sorry, I don’t have a lot of specifics yet.
There was a decent winter fishery on Pepin years ago….as in prior to the nuke plant at Prairie Island. There were lots of good spots to ice fish. Today? Maybe a couple decent spots can be found.
Frontenac beach can be half good at times but if the reactors are operating success there will be real hit or miss. A guy could try the Hok-Si-La beach too. Low light periods or very early morning or late afternoon seem to have the best for bite times.
There are a couple minor spots on the Sconnie side across form Frontenac sort of. One is the wing dam at Stockholm. If you can find good ice right smack off the end of the rocks on the channel end there’s a hole that will hold walleyes and sauger, more sauger than waldo though. This can be a decent spot. Above the dam a couple miles there’s a spot closer to shore that has some deeper water that holds winter walleyes too but its been a bit since I fished it.
With the reactors in full operation I think its a waste of time fishing much below Frontenac or Stockholm and suggest snooping around even further upstream of these two areas, just be mindful that the ice is almost opposite of a lake on the big river in that the cold will require higher operating levels at the reactor which result in lots more warm water being discharged and where good ice existed when it was warmer, the warmer water can erode and thin the ice during the real cold. Gotta fish defensively on that big drink…use a spud a lot.
IMHO-people love to fish Pepin for open water because it is not a good but a great trolling water. That said with 100 holes cut you cannot fish what people cover in 15 minutes of trolling. Bait fish drift around and Walters follow them not too many spots to concentrate them. Could be spots, Ok tell this person some GPS coordinates. Hope you now got a pm with numbers. No? Ok go there in November and mark some spots. Again IMHO, I have nothing on my Hummingbird that could help you. Good Luck!
Everyone Thank you!!
I’ve fished Pool 4 for over 15 years. Rarely do I fish the main lake during ice fishing. There’s simply just too much water to cover, and a majority of the saugers and walleyes head into area tributaries or near them to Winter. Those places do not have much, if any good ice.
If you are targeting walleyes/saugers, head up to Red Wing and take a boat (just remember to NOT fish the scour hole, and practice selective harvest as fish can be vulnerable from January-April). There are places a few may be pulled through the ice, but it’s very limited.
If you are after panfish on the main lake, I’d try to fish with a group. Use tip-downs spread out to cover a large area while hole hopping with your other lines. As a pervious poster stated, any points will have minimal ice. The Minnesota side South of Lake City would be primarily off-limits to safe ice fishing in my opinion. More of the consistent ice seems to be on the WI side in my limited experience (Maiden Rock, Stockholm, outside Pepin Marina)
I’ve fished the river about 20 years and have read about this “scour” hole. What the heck is it and how would I even know if I was fishing it? I take it must be somewhere by the dam….heck maybe I’ve even fished it?
I’ve fished the river about 20 years and have read about this “scour” hole. What the heck is it and how would I even know if I was fishing it? I take it must be somewhere by the dam….heck maybe I’ve even fished it?
It’s the very deep hole just below the dam. Usually small fish are pulled from the depths and cannot adjust to the pressure and die.
IMHO-people love to fish Pepin for open water because it is not a good but a great trolling water. That said with 100 holes cut you cannot fish what people cover in 15 minutes of trolling. Bait fish drift around and Walters follow them not too many spots to concentrate them. Could be spots, Ok tell this person some GPS coordinates. Hope you now got a pm with numbers. No? Ok go there in November and mark some spots. Again IMHO, I have nothing on my Hummingbird that could help you. Good Luck!
Not many gps numbers to give out Tim. The dynamics of Pepin changed when warm water began being discharged into the river ahead of the lake. Spots that were historic winter locations and produced fish all winter long disappeared as soon as the reactor fired up. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd creek along with the ever infamous Roschen Park landing area and Trailer Point had tons of perms and people sitting on the ice in the most brutal weather and they caught fish. Lots of fish. I was there and I caught lots of fish. Within two years of reactor service the whole fishery in these areas sunk. Stopped producing fish in the winter. The Sportsman’s Club in Lake City had a fishing contest every winter that drew hundreds of people….today a 4 ounce perch would be a big fish contender IF someone could catch one.
In years where one or both of the reactors are down for service or repair Frontenac beach lights right up and people swarm the place and catch lots of fish. Within a few days of the reactor going back on line that place may as well be the Sahara. The bottom line….walleyes and sauger follow the warm water to its source. The dam being the stopping point for their movement becomes the source of the warm water. As soon as warm water ceases to flow the fish fall back into a typical winter pattern, hence the bite at Frontenac taking off. If the reactors are down long enough even Hok-Si-La beach will get going as well as a minor bite at Trailer Point. The only part of this scenario that is provable is the warm water being put in the river and the lack of a winter bite in the areas I’ve mentioned. If the warm water ceased to be introduced, the winter fishery would most certainly return….again as evidenced by the bite returning to the areas mentioned when the warm water does cease just periodically. The fish themselves tell more truth in their actions reflected by warm water or its absence than what the dnr or energy departments will tell you. There’d be one heck of a winter bite if the dynamic of the lake were allowed to return to what they were prior to the introduction of that nuclear reactor.
The devil is always in the details.
interesting. i take it tom doesn’t like the nuclear plant
Not a bit.
So if I understand this correctly during the winter months due to the power plant adding warm water it is best to go up to the red wing dam and fish open water.
The ice fishing else where is hit or miss as the fish migrate to the warmer water near the dam. Unless there are long periods of no power plant activity the dam is the place to be?
Thanks a ton there has been some very interesting discussion on the topic. Initially I was thinking of trying something new by ice fishing Pepin near Lake City.
Again thank you to the time and energy responding to my questions
Bob
Bob….you may find crappies on the upstream side of Trailer Point by drilling holes straight out from shore starting about twenty yards from the sand. The bottom there has a “stair-step” configuration that drops in two to 4 foot drops every four to five feet. Winter crappies will relate to this structure to some degree but they can be hit or miss as they like to travel the whole length of that particular shore and finding/staying with them can be a real pile of work. There’s always an outside chance you’ll snare a walleye or sauger there too but I haven’t seen one over 6 inches from a hole in the ice in years.
Red Wing’s Bayport Marina has quite a bit of fishing opportunity with simple access and depending on where in there you drop a line you can catch sunfish, perch, crappies, northern, walleye/sauger. At the foot end of Pepin in Wabasha you can wet a line in the marina right in town too with great access. I’d opt to fish near the dock closest to the opening to the river in the wide area created there. Typically its and early or late bite. Right across the river on the highway between Wabasha and Nelson Wisconsin you’ll find the back waters are froze up pretty good if you stay where there are tracks in the snow or find where others are fishing. Like anywhere though it can be great or a good reason to go have a beer. Your Minnesota license is good to the railroad tracks on the S’connie side so there’s lots of backwater areas to snoop in.
But if you’re dead set on waldo or his compadre Mr. Saug, you’ll likely do best by staying well north of the Frontenac area but the beach there could be checked to see if you can get bit, stranger things have happened should you catch one. You could take a long rod along too and fish the levee wall in front of the train station in Red Wing paying particular attention to the little pocket created behind the mooring poles. Lots of snags but lots of walleyes and sauger lay in there due to lack of current. Jigs/minnows or bucktails are common baits. Think chartreuse.
Its not that there aren’t walleyes and sauger to be caught….they just aren’t in the old historic locations during the winter anymore.
Tom pretty much nailed it….I’ve had 3 really good winter bites on the lake since 2000…..all reactor related….I’m not saying I haven’t caught fish otherwise but it’s barely worth the time but it’so close to me I’ll take my chances for a fish or 2.
interesting. i take it tom doesn’t like the nuclear plant
Well, I haven’t fished it, but can tell you fishing in the vicinity of a nuclear plant doesn’t sound very appealing. My kids don’t need their dad doubling as their nightlight.
Not sure I’d ever feel quite right about eating anything out of that area, either.
I don’t care how safe they try to tell me it is. The fish are swimming around in water used to cool a nuclear reactor, for crying out loud.
Is there a way to know if the reactor is due to go down?
The nuke plant will would issue a news release in the event of a shut down or repairs. In weather like this you’d have a whole lot more ice closer to the dam. Drive down to Alma and check out the dam/ice relationship there. Red Wing would look like that if the plant shut down for the winter. The fish would shift back to the lake since there’d be no warm water to follow or they simply wouldn’t start that shift if the plant shut down before cold weather arrived.
There are a lot of people who weren’t born yet and have no idea what Lake City’s fishing was like up until the early 70’s. They have no idea what the area near the dam at Red Wing really looked like in the winter. If anyone thinks for a minute that water 2 or 3 degrees warmer than the river water its being put into doesn’t affect things, they seriously need to got to Alma or Bass Camp and view those dams right now. They’d show what the Red Wing dam was like pre-nuke plant. Then imagine having several shanty towns scatter from Lake City down to near La Cupolis every winter, all producing fish….and compare that ice fishing to what’s there today with the plant. That 2 to 3 degree water difference can be witnessed each winter as far south as La Cupolis where the river narrows. A couple years ago Carole and I drove up along the river past La Cupolis and there were two pick ups parked about 200 feet above where the water opened up. The guys were tending roughfish nets. The day was like the weather a couple weeks prior …beautiful and in the thirties. Two weeks to the day we made the same drive and the weather had turned very cold just after that first trip. Where those trucks HAD been parked was wide open water for perhaps 500 to 600 feet back towards the lake. The water was steaming with the cold. The cold weather demanded more electricity so they ramped up the generating and discharging rates came with the kilowatt increase. Those two or three degrees had held together under the whole lake’s ice cap to erode the ice where the narrows brought it up. Now if its enough to melt ice at sub zero temperatures, does one have think very hard to imagine what it might do to the dynamics of the lake’s fish populations?
Is there a way to know if the reactor is due to go down?
One reactor is shutdown for maintenance every year around october. Just let you know the water that is discharged from the plant is cleaner then when it comes into the plant.
Just let you know the water that is discharged from the plant is cleaner then when it comes into the plant.
Virtually every waste water treatment plant makes that claim too. Step right up….
The point here is water TEMPERATURE, not quality, but you’re probably correct.
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