LOW garden island

If you have snowmobiles there are a lot better areas you can access than that. Look to hit the many reefs and shoals around knight and bridges islands or go further north where the lake begins to shift towards more of a traditional shield lake where you can fish more normal spots like points, reefs and break lines. Not sure if your used to traveling long distances by snowmobile to ice fish or not but if your not prepared and don’t pack correctly, your gear will get absolutely destroyed. Good luck and report back.

Ben Murawski wrote:

We are heading up to Lake of the woods the last week in January with snowmobiles so we can be mobile. Wondering how the fishing is around Garden island this time of year?

Unlimited 13 inch fish.

Knights and Bridges area used to be good until Adrians gets their road out that far and now its nothing special. There is a lot of structure around garden island and some islands further west. We got turned around on our way trying to get to garden island one year and found a rockpile and had it to ourselves and did really well. This was several miles west of garden.

Thank you, yeah we are set up to travel long distances if need to and somewhat familiar with the lake. It’s been a few year since we fished it this time of year it seems like most of the schools have moved out to 30 feet.

When we used to bring our ice castle up there lots, we always tried to set up in 18 feet. That seemed like the sweet spot to weed out lots of the small fish and have action at night too. Seems like if your out in the basin deep there’s tons of sorting. I absolutely hate that. I’d rather catch a dozen nice fish all day than go deep and brag about how I caught 100 fish and fail to mention there was barely a limit of keepers involved.

Kind of a funny story about the first time we went to Sunset up at the angle from wheelers point on snowmobiles. I had a brand new otter resort so we decided that would be the proper fish house to bring because we could pile the most stuff in there, gear, propane, bags with clothes, beer, liquor, you name it! The trail was smooth and the going was great or so we thought. We were clipping along at about 40-50 mph the whole way to the knight/bridges area when we decided to stop to fish for a while. We pulled the cover off the portable and the carnage was instantly seen. Pretty much every item was unrecognizable. We had 2 cases of beer and there were only a handful of them that didn’t explode and the cans were flattened like nothing I’d ever seen. My friend had an unopened bottle of captain wrapped up in a pair of jeans that got bounced around so much the cap twisted off. I had ol trusty SM40 in the sled and it wore most of the paint off the flites and those in turn wore huge holes in the canvas of the new otter. I had a 5 gallon bucket with rods standing up in it and it vibrated so much it wore through the cover on the portable. Bucket of minnows didn’t stand a chance, it was nothing but bloody water. It was amazing! All we could do was laugh and get to the resort and try to dry out our booze soaked clothes. We now all have long long tracked sleds so everything can go in a box on the sled. Absolutely nothing gets put in a portable getting pulled behind.

lol! we also learned the heard way don’t put your beer in the sled.

walleyesforme wrote:

Kind of a funny story about the first time we went to Sunset up at the angle from wheelers point on snowmobiles. I had a brand new otter resort so we decided that would be the proper fish house to bring because we could pile the most stuff in there, gear, propane, bags with clothes, beer, liquor, you name it! The trail was smooth and the going was great or so we thought. We were clipping along at about 40-50 mph the whole way to the knight/bridges area when we decided to stop to fish for a while. We pulled the cover off the portable and the carnage was instantly seen. Pretty much every item was unrecognizable. We had 2 cases of beer and there were only a handful of them that didn’t explode and the cans were flattened like nothing I’d ever seen. My friend had an unopened bottle of captain wrapped up in a pair of jeans that got bounced around so much the cap twisted off. I had ol trusty SM40 in the sled and it wore most of the paint off the flites and those in turn wore huge holes in the canvas of the new otter. I had a 5 gallon bucket with rods standing up in it and it vibrated so much it wore through the cover on the portable. Bucket of minnows didn’t stand a chance, it was nothing but bloody water. It was amazing! All we could do was laugh and get to the resort and try to dry out our booze soaked clothes. We now all have long long tracked sleds so everything can go in a box on the sled. Absolutely nothing gets put in a portable getting pulled behind.

I had to chuckle about this. The condition of the trail will vary but even a very small bump will send things flying in a sled even at approx. 12 miles per hour.

Lol I have a few great stories from going to Garden, one similar one was a Vexilar FL8 that launched out of a sled and went flying higher than most NFL punts, it still works to this day. Some of the best days of fishing out there, and agree w/ W4ME if you stay in the teens fow you will have fewer bites but bigger fish imo.

Back before Otter put that T-Bar or whatever on their tow hitch the sleds could flip upside down. Happened to my buddy hauling his sled up to the angle what a mess that was.

CaptainMusky wrote:

Back before Otter put that T-Bar or whatever on their tow hitch the sleds could flip upside down. Happened to my buddy hauling his sled up to the angle what a mess that was.

That happened to us on the way back. My friend was pulling the resort and somehow the “u” shaped thing the pin goes through opened up and the house came loose. The tongue dug into the snow and the house did multiple barrel rolls. My friend is kind of a dink and didn’t notice and never looked back until he was out of sight. The night before we were going around to the resorts enjoying way way to many $1 tappers (apparently that’s a thing they have up there) and I had blown a belt on my sled thumping on it way to hard. I put the spare belt on and went back to sunset for the night. Apparently that new belt was a little tighter than the other one and when I stopped and got off to hook up the fish house to my sled it took off on its own just fast enough I couldn’t catch it. After running as fast as I could after it I had to just give up but somehow it managed to keep hitting drifts and it came back right to the trail where I was standing. Who knows where that thing could have ended up if it didn’t come back. Could have been really bad. That trip was a complete $hit show! My friend never stopped until he got to pine island.

LMAO!! Closest I’ve had to that was fishing ND with a crew. We wanted to make a move so I loaded up and went and picked up one of the guys with the sxs. Hooked his house up and headed across the lake. Didn’t have far to go so he didn’t put his cover on. Smooth sailing until I straddled a chunk of ice I didn’t see from I assume a spear hole. Looked in the rear view mirror just in time to see his sled absolutely explode with his gear and what had to be a case worth of Keith Stone empties.