Not sure if Optiz is near as good in the winter as it is in summer. If it is even 1/2 as good, it still would be a great lake. Sportsmans bait should be able to let you know if Optiz would be a good choice or not. There is also a lake just South of Town. I can not think of the name. It has a flooded farmhouse in the middle of the lake. I had several friend who did well on the crappies there last winter. Lots of 12-13″ fish.
I think you are thinking of Reetz.
I’ll add an update. I went out on MLK Day (Jan 18) and started out on Big Spirit. I was the only one on the lake that I could see. Set up the shack just after 8AM in about 17 ft of water. Caught a small walleye and a couple of nice, 10″ perch. It was pretty slow. Only had marks come through 5-6 times in 4 hours. I went over to West Okoboji around 1PM and set up in 19 ft. I only had a couple hours to fish but I was always marking fish and had followers pretty much constantly. Caught a handful of perch. Half were the 3-4″ variety and the other half were 9″ keepers. My bucket pretty much mirrored brad-o’s at the end of the day.
Ice on Spirit was 14-16 inches with the top couple inches being frozen slush. West had 12-14 inches of good, dark ice. A couple people were driving mid-size pickups on the ice on West.
Last time I went up there I caught a 29″ Walleye on a Slender Spoon tipped with a minnow head along with a handful of Jumbos.
Big Spirit? Thinking about heading up there this weekend.
