Minoqua area ice fishing

Well I went snowmobiling with a few old friends in the Minoqua area, my buddy’s dad bought a house on a little lake up there. Going in I looked at the map and saw all the famous lakes for a little side trip ice fishing. Trout Lake, Big Arbour Vitae, Turtle Flambeau, Star, Lac Vieux Desert just to name a few. This part of our great state has more lakes than a guy could ever hope to shake a fishing pole at. WOW! Well in the end we thought fishing with the comfort of a cabin within walking distance would be cool, if we catch fish great if not we will fire up the machines and go sledding. This lake is a shallow dishpan, maybe 8′ deep. I drilled a line of holes and set the tip ups and waited while Steve went to town to get waxies and shiners. Meanwhile I set my buddy Bill up with a small jig and plastic. No sooner we set down and pow, fish on. For the next three hours we catch about 150 gils, keeping a limit 0f 7-8″ fish. Next day same thing. All I can say is sometimes the good Lord provides an unexpected bounty. We had a blast…..

I seem to be having some trouble re sizing my pictures I will post a few a little later

here is the promised pictures, I believe the lake was Lower Greshem, but I am not sure. I can find out if anyone would like to try it

Filet heaven, when I catch gils like this I peel the scales off and filet them, yummy!

They are asking about 250,000 for the shacks in this area, must be four for sale within spittin range of my bud’s shack, this lake is half state land with only about 20 houses and 1 resort with a bar, the one in the middle is were we stayed.

1 last shot, this snowmobile is the ultimate ice machine, I might have to save a few penny’s and buy 1

bigpike:

Glad to see you enjoyed the area. If I tell you the resort, bar/restaurant was Pope’s and I hope you ate the fishfry there, then you are correct, you were on Lower Gresham.

Actually you did pretty well as I understood most of the pans in there were quite a bit smaller. Let us know when you are coming to the area again. Jason Sullivan was up here last weekend as well fishing to the southeast of us. I haven’t heard all of his tales yet, but with Dodge Boy living up here I am starting to feel a little more love from the IDA’ers!!!

It is truly one of the great areas to explore for an outdoors person.

Mark

Good job What kind of shack is that in the first pic?

Nicew looking gills. I like to do mine the same as you mentioned, take a spoon to them to remove the scales then filet them out. I like the skin fried crispy!

Thanks guys, we had a bump at Pope’s but no fish fry, fresh gil was pretty sweet. I do love the Minoqua area, my in-laws live on Nokomis, I dont like fishing that lake, they screw around with the water to much on that lake. When I lived in Milwaukee we would vacation on Star. What a beautiful lake that is, and the national campground on it is second to none- love the lake side camping/ boat docking. If I could make a living I would move to Minoqua in a heartbeat, maybe I can talk my better half into living there when I retire in 20 years or so. The couple guys we ran into on the lake were pretty amazed at the fishing we had there also, so I guess you could say we hit it just right. All I can say is that bite was unreal, at times my locater was completely red with solid fish and very few dinks to contend with. That shack is a Frabill but I am not sure what type, I never even set it up, I was just using it to haul all my gear out, I left my shack at home…