Lake of the Woods Fish Report

Fished Jan 2 from 1:30 to 4:30. Four fisherman, 2 houses caught 21 Walleye and Saugers Kept 10 decent fish ranging from 14 to 18 inches. Snowed that nite about 8 inches. Fished Jan 3 from 8:30 to 3:00 Caught 46 Walleye and Sauger Kept 18 ranging from 14 to 19 inches. More Walleye than saugers. Tried to leave the lake at 3 because the wind was gusting to 40 mph. Had my Ram truck with air suspension set at off road 2 which is 4 inches higher than normal. Could only see about 50 to 75 feet due to the blowing snow. Saw the black jug where we had to turn and went about 10 feet and buried it in a 3 foot high snow drift that was about 25 feet long. Opened the doors and we pushed snow out of the way with them. Had my tow rope and the other truck in our party of 4 pulled me out. Was ready to call Bayview lodge and have them plow but they beat me to it. They plowed our road and told us they were getting all the fisherman off the lake by 4. Went back to the cabin and ate 8 fish for supper. The wind went down that nite and the roads were open the next morning. We went out at 8:00 and fished till 12:00 to fill our the 12 fish we needed for our limit. Only 4 could be Walleyes. Kept 4 Walleyes that were about 18 inches and threw back several shorter ones. We kept 8 saugers between 13 and 15 inches to fill our limit. The numbers of fish caught was about 1/2 of what we usually catch, but the size was the best since we have been going up

Nice report. You motivated me to solidify my plans.

Nice report! It was definitely a nasty few days to be up there!

Thanks for the post

What techniques seemed to work best. I’m heading up in a month.

We were in 30 feet of water about 3 miles past Pine Island. The fish were tight to the bottom. We set our dead sticks at 2 to 4 inches off the bottom. We used a orange hook tipped with shiners. Our jigging rods worked best with a gold/ orange Macho Minnow or orange glow buckshot tipped with a minnow head. We worked them starting at 2 inches from the bottom and when a fish appeared we could coax them up about a foot to 18 inches and they would bite. A cold front was making its way through and the temps on the lake were 10 to 20 below zero. We caught a few Walleye that were 3 to 5 feet off the bottom, but they few and far in between. Orange glow seemed to be the ticket for us.