Lake Onalaska

we will be heading over sunday for a day of fishing…..should be at fishermans road by 11:00 or possiblily earlier…..if you see someone 6’5″ wearing black bibs and blue coat it will be me…may be the guy doing all the catching

everything at fishermans rd seems to be small to say the least. give 1-2 years and if they have enough to eat it will be a good place. tons of small ones BLGL, in the 4-6 inch range

Ahhh, patience young grasshopper That happens on occasion anywhere you go. The big ones are there, just not in that particular area that day. If I am on a consistent small fish bite, I move until I find the bigger fish. Some times it never happens, but most of the time it does. I may end up catching fewer fish, but at least they are not little dinks . I am headed somewhere tomorrow, just not sure where, I need to make a few phone calls and do a wee bit of shopping and then it will be time to get serious with the ice fishing

got on ice by 10:30 am today….quite a few out by the the time we arrived….caught a lot of gills (dinks)…and 5-6 bass also small………..maybe we left to early before the “bulls” started to bite, don was tire of catching the small ones………..maybe a different day……saw one guy with 8 or 10 gills on ice(personally would have only kept 1 or 2,but good to get the smaller ones out of there) anyone fish there today??

johnl and myself fished from noon-4:15 today in front of Schaeffers (Red Sails), with not much luck We started off in the shallow water in the weeds. Nothing much going there so we moved to the channel and 12 fow. We picked up 2 keeper gills and a few dinks. Not much going on around us either. I only saw 2 fish with the camera Oh well, tomorrow is another day

Fished over in the bay by Nutbush and had two keepers between two of us. Tried a couple other spots and only caught one perch. Pretty slow day. But at least we were on the ice.

i have a question where is black deer at? and are they catching any fish out there or not?

Black Deeer is a small boat launch on the Prairie. They are catching fish there some days. It is like anywhere else, some days are good and some not Black Deer is where most of the duck hunters launch their boats from.

Different story today caught over forty fish and kept 13,only one crappie, under two hours. I have mixed feelings about these posts. I don’t want everybody mad at me for telling them where the fish are biting but isn’t that what this is for? What are your thoughts. I still say hey they still have to catch them themselves. Today’s trip was going to this spot but I stopped to talk to a couple guys and this other guy went where I was going. I set up a ways from him and was catching fish one after the other so I invited him over, We were about 10 yrds apart and these two guys from Milwaukee came over and drilled in between us I thought I was going to have to move the bucket I was sitting on so they could drill another hole. No comments we were nice to them.

My personal approach is this, if the fish are biting I let people know. I try and give as much detail as possible that worked for me on that particular place and day. It will not work for everybody like it did for me and same goes for other people’s info given to me. Sure there are a few that think everything should be kept a secret, but that is selfish behavior and doesn’t help anyone. Beleive me, there are alot more people who appreciate tips than people who just want to be grumpy
My luck today was terrible. I never even got a nibble at Black Deer or below the dam at Dresbach

Glad you were on fish…..It doesn’t matter if you say if you were on black deer, or in front of schafers, or wherever….Unless you release the exact GPS position, who cares if you say the fish are biting….You making a post on where you are catching fish isn’t going to make someone else catch fish..they still have to know what they are doing. POST AWAY or PM me where you were..lol

If people get mad, FO is what i tell them

Thanks a lot Gonefishing. I thought we agreed that all your posts would go through me for “filtering” first. Especially when Slop and Watson are lurking about.

lol

Sorry Herb, and thanks Slop and Watson, I agree I like helping people so guess I’ll do what I feel is right. Anyway I’m headed back over there right now with my 5 and 6 year old grandkids. The fish were hitting my jig before I could get it back down to the bottom in 10 feet of water. Don’t know what you call this place but it’s on Lauderdale Crt past Nutbush north bay. See ya on the ice. Hey Herb check out that baby crappie you use versus that hog gill I have.

I fished there about 3 years ago and did pretty good on crappie. For some reason, I have never went back
Hope the kids catch a bunch

Kids had fun granddaughter (6) caught 5 and grandson, who doesn’t have a very long attention span, of course he’s not 5 yet caught one. A fisherman came over and gave each of them 3 keepers a piece and another nice fisherman gave us a couple more keepers so we came home with 10 keepers and I filleted them out and they took them home with smiles. Don’t know where the crappie have gone in there the only ones I saw were very small. Had a fun day with the kids ice is getting pretty sloppy around the shoreline.

I’m afraid that pic will stay until I get that 18incher I’m hunting for. Just hope to heck I have a camera with when I get her.

OK Herb

I got spanked again by the pannies in front of Schaefers this morning and afternoon But, on a good note, I got to play with the new Aqua View Scout . I have mixed feelings about those cameras. When I fished with the vex and the fish came up to a jig, stared and left, it was no big deal because I figured they were dinks anyway. Well, let me tell ya….WRONG , at least sometimes anyway. Today I got to watch hundreds of fish race to the jig, stare and then back away and there were some dandies in there I tried every color, size, technique, and bait I had to no avail. The fish were there, I just couldn’t get them figured out at all. The best part was late in the afternoon. A big northern came across the top of the screen so all I could see was the gills, then the fins, and finally the tail. I was thinking, oh no, he is going for the camera. Then a little later he came face to face with the camera in a stare down. That was just awesome. But they weren’t done yet. For probably 10-15 minutes the northern(s) paraded in front of the camera. It/they would slowly disappear into the weeds and then reappear from a different place. They just vanish in the weeds. Needless to say, the gills got the heck out of Dodge. So far the camera has been very eye opening and fun.

Late morning I went out to the airport beach on the Black River and found plenty of uninterested fish. Caught half a dozen (small) saugers, one keeper. I got out on Blue Lake from 3-5 and did fairly well. I caught 13 fish total, 10 were keeper gills. They took some work to get a hit, but generally if you could draw them a few feet up off the bottom they wound up on the ice.

Hey I’m coming up from Milwaukee on this coming Sunday to fish Lake Onalaska. I was just wondering what the recent conditions are. How thick is the ice? Anyone driving out or using four wheelers yet? Thanks for the info.

Pirate-Welcome aboard the IDA family The ice is in good condition right now. There has been snowmobiles and 4-wheelers running on it for at least a week now. There was also a small car on the ice today . The fishing is kind of slow currently, but there are plenty of fish.

Thanks for the info, I’m gonna be out there on Monday all day. I don’t think that I will be driving out though especially with the warm weather.

Was anyone out there today? Do any good?

I went out 2 days ago at black deer and not a thing was moving for anyone. I moved down to schaffer’s in the afternoon and caught a keeper gill and two nice perch. There were also several almost keeper gills and crappie caught. I took some people out to schaffer’s early morning yesterday for a few hours and landed a few dink gills and perch. Pretty slow.

anyone been catching any on the lake lately?

just wondering if everyone has there game plan for the fishing tourney and if your catching fish on the lake as i have not fished it but i have been down behind nutbush and caught a couple small ones.

Hello, this Sunday I will be taking my Dad and his wife out ice fishing for their first time ever. They live in Onalaska so I was hoping someone could tell me where a good spot on the river would be hopefully that I could drive on. I would like to be on the river so none of us need to buy a license and would like to be able to drive on the ice because I’ll most likely bring all three of my shacks to keep them comfy and I don’t feel like dragging them AND all my gear (I don’t want them to have to do any work either ) At the same time I would like them to be able to catch something just for the fun of it albeit walleye, sunfish or drum. Is Lake Onalaska a good choice? Thanks for any info!!

Chris

You can fish the lake with a WI or MN license. You can pretty much drive anywhere on the lake now. This past weekend I think there was a record amount of people on the lake. If you find the deeper channel that runs through the lake, you should be able to find fish. If you make it out to the runway lights, you should be able to get into some nice gills and perch. That area is pretty shallow and weedy, but I see people are out there now.

Thank you kind sir. Another question: I pulled up a DNR map of the lake and there is some deeper water (15′-20′) to the south (slightly south-southeast) of Red Oak Ridge. This is (using the scale on the map) appx. 350 yards north of an outflow. Has anyone fished near here or know if it is safe? Obviously I would not drive right to the hole but close as it is surrounded by 6-7 feet of water. Thanks again to anyone that might be able to answer this one .

Chris