Vermillion River Advice

We were looking at coming up to the Vermillion River to do some Ice fishing. Never fished it so any advice would be appreciated.

I’ve always gone out of Dushanes and walked downstream towards the tressle to get after the walleyes and saugers. Jigging spoons, chart/white seemed to be the ticket, or a minnow on a light jig under a bobber worked well. This bite has always been an early and late deal so during the middle of the day we would move to the bay just upstream from Dushanes and did the tip-up thing for pike. Good action there on the slimers. Shiners seemed to always work better than suckers. The water in that back bay is shallow too… 3′ – 5′ so your tip-ups won’t be set very deep and a person needs to be very quiet when waiting for flags.

Best of luck to you and let us know how you did. Chris Tuckner fishes this area all the time and might have an up-to-the-minute report for you if he gets a chance to visit the site. He’s been working sport shows like mad lately but peeks in frequently.

Sorry for a dumb question., where is Duchanes?

Dushanes is probably 5 miles or so south of Hastings. I don’t know the road name so hopefully someone else can help you. I fished the Dushanes area Fri.,Sat. and sunday with little success. A few small sauger down by the tressle was all we got. I could see them on the Vexilar but they weren’t interested. I sure wished I had some of the garlic scent to see if that might have triggered them. Nothing I threw at them made them turn on.

County road 54/10th street is the road out of Hastings.
Look for the public access. The property to the north of it is Dushanes. That’s how the locals id it. But walk out from the Public Access.
I haven’t fished down there for a long time.
At least not in the winter.
Heard a while back (during the warm spell) that some crappies were being caught. I too would be interested in an update.
Anyone been down there?
My tip-ups need to get out for a spin.

We fished Blackbird on Sunday evening and it was slow,to say the least.Three of us caught four very small sauger and one equally small walleye.I haven’t fished Dushanes this year but,I’ve not seen alot of guys down there either which,is usually a good indicater of the bite or lack there of in this case.Seems the typical January lull is in full swing everywhere.Mike