Ice fishing with a buddy tonight in Red wing, he hooked into something big 45 plus minutes of reeling, only saw the bobber stop once. Not a lot of head shakes just dead weight and lots of line peeling but super slow.
Couldn’t really stop it to save our lives. Just a fat head minnow about a foot off the bottom. It was about 7:30 when it all started and I’ve never caught a Northern or musky after dark. What do you think it was?
Big sturgeon would be my guess, although I don’t have much experience with either. Not sure what else gets big enough to fight for that long, even on lighter gear.
My first Sturg was through the ice using your combo minus the float.
Pike and Skis generally have a run in their fight. Since there is a healthy population of Lake Sturgeon (and the smaller Shovelnose) I’m willing to bet you felt the power of a Sturg.
There will be an open catch and release season opening up this year and running through March 1st of 2016 on the MN side of the river. Assuming all goes well, the WI side will open to catch and release Lake Sturgeon fishing in 2016.
Could have been one of these as well, took me 20 plus min to get this one in the boat and it felt like a barn door the whole time.
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Could have been one of these as well, took me 20 plus min to get this one in the boat and it felt like a barn door the whole time.
Paddlefish?
Always a chance it was a paddle. A sturgeon will eat a minnow where a paddle would be snagged as they are plankton eaters (although they do swim with their mouth open). Since there wasn’t much head shaking I would guess if it was a sturg or a paddle, it wasn’t hooked in the tail that would feel like head shaking.
Either way, if it was large enough it might not even known he was hooked on ice gear.
That would have been fun to see! I suppose it couldn’t have been a Flathead?
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