Its been awhile since I have reported anything but due to findings on the ice today I feel compelled to give some insight to the ice on walker bay. First the fishing report – Tomorrow will be one week of having houses out with renters. I started out on the north end of Walker bay in 12 to 15ft of water. The first house I put out was 10 days ago. I had it rented for one night and placed the house in 16ft where we had some decent results with portables days before. We had about 10 inches of ice. The renters managed 5 keeper walleyes, not great but a fishy spot with some decent perch, northern and pout all swimming the area. Spots like this rarely produce big numbers of walleye but provide variety to break up the day and night between walleye thirty o’clock. A week ago tomorrow (Thursday) I put all 7 houses out and filled them with renters. I spread them out along a break off a flat and placed the house in 12 to 16 ft of water. Not all houses produced but most had a few walleyes each day along with some jumbos. The weekend came with brutal below zero temps ( I don’t think it got above zero for 4 days) and the fishing took a nose dive for the worse. A couple houses managed some eyes but very few. However we made it thru the cold snap and nobody froze. With the cold front behind us I still felt I needed to move some houses so we moved out to the 30ft depths of north walker bay. I left a couple of houses in shallower as I figured the fish would get back to feeding and those houses have been kicking out a few walleye along with the perch, pout and northern as they did before the cold snap. The houses I moved deep have been producing good numbers of walleye the last couple of days. However as the deep bite is, there are lots of small eyes with some keepers mixed in. The down side is there are no perch in these areas and unless it’s a snowy over cast day you only have the sun-up sun down windows. That said the action during those windows can be well worth the slow mid-day activity. (Today we had heavy over cast with a light precipitation and the walleyes bit well mid-day)
Now for the ice report. I was consistently seeing 14 and 15 inches of ice in the north walker bay area,,,, until I moved deeper. Much to my surprise I have been coming across a lot of 10 inch areas. I do not feel 10 inches is enough for trucks with big wheel houses. I don’t even like driving a bare ½ ton on 10” but did so without knowing it. I had thought that with the numerous nights at 20 below and colder and day time highs below zero that we would sufficient ice to travel about. That is NOT the case. We did get about 6 inches of snow and it did slow the ice build. If you are heading out anywhere on walker bay you need to check ice or know where you are going. I am seeing big trucks with big wheel house just heading out into the basin and its not a good idea. We will not be making any ice for a while either so know where you are going !! I don’t mean to scare anyone from coming to leech lake or walker bay, there are areas with truck travel and good ice with plenty of areas to fish. I just want to warn ice fishermen that just because there is 15 inches here does NOT mean its 15 inches over there, where ever that may be. That being said, if you are wheeler, side by side or snowmobile fisherman you have access to most of the lake.
