Just thought I’d throw up a report from the Mobridge area. Also took a couple pics along the way. We were on our annual trek to the Mobridge Chamber Ice Fishing Tourney. Got going bright and early last Thurday AM and made it into town about 1pm. Checked in to the hotel and met up with my buddies son and our other partner who had scouted some possible access area to the north. They hit the jackpot and we had use of a dirt road and cattle yard which led right to the waters edge. Had the GPS going and thought we’d try a mid river hump, it was 52 FOW and there was activity on the flasher. Lowered the slender spoon down and lost it at about 40 FOW, current! Drilled a hole 2 feet downstream for the vex and everything was clear. Pulled up the first hit and the small walleye had the air bladder popped out of the mouth, this wasn’t going to work. Went in to the shore line structure and the 13-14 inch walleye were jumping through the holes. We kept our 16 for 4 guys after sorting up to a 15 inch average, went in and cleaned up our fish. Grilled up a meal of fresh walleye. Friday we got out around 9AM and it was nonstop just about all day. Caught a few 4-5lbs cats, 9″ perch, decent white bass mixed in. We didn’t keep anything till 16″, buddy Randy caught a 23 1/2 fattie and we had a couple 18″ers also. We were sure we had it all figured out for the tourney the next day. At the cleaning table we easily had the best bucket. Went downtown to the rules meeting, tossed back a few cold ones with the locals, they were saying south was where the big ones were at, we just smiled as we had figured it out already! Saturday AM kick off from the Coke Plant at 9AM and you leave as your team number is read off. We were one of the first on our spot and bam! Fish are active. Threw a couple 15″ fish back thinking we would have no problem getting our 6 to weigh over 16″ and maybe a bruiser too. Things went lock jaw shortly thereafter. They would charge right up, stop, drop, rise, repeat it was frustrating! The weather was picture perfect, couldn’t ask for a better day to fish. We weighed 4 and came in 150th place, would have should have could have kept those first couple
If any Facebook people out there you can see the Mobridge Chamber Ice Fishing Tourney page and see the pictures and even pictures taken from a plane that came upstream about 6 feet off of the ice. We will be back, the locals are awesome, the tourney is very well run, the town turns out to see to it that you are welcome. They are capped at 500 teams, there’s a lottery every fall for about 20 spots which open up and about 300 people are after those spot. The couple from Rochester who sat in front of us got in paying $1,100 on an E-bay auction, they won a pile of goodies and came out about break even.
First pics are from the drive down to the lake, fish on the cleaning table and the biggest walleye we caught, and a pic from the plane of us on our pails.
