3 Species Limit in One Day – Alexandria Trifecta!

Thursday I had the pleasure of hitting the ice with a couple previous clients from the metro area. These guys love to fish hard and are willing to do whatever it takes to put fish on the ice. With that in mind I planned a pretty vigorous agenda for them: to fish sunfish, crappie and walleye on three different lakes all in one afternoon/evening.

The first spot we fished was a small bay attached to a larger body of water. This bay has been producing a good number of large gills and crappie. With high hopes I started drilling holes, and lots of ’em. The first 40 holes yielded only small fish so I started drilling toward the larger part of the lake, as this is the direction the larger fish move as the season wears on. After another 50 holes we finally connected on some solid 9-10” bluegills. We were using #12 green/black and blue/white horizontal jigs tipped with a couple larva. Over the next hour and half it was a total slug fest pulling in a mix of nice crappie and down right slob sized gills. We could have kept a limit but Bob and Dave just wanted to keep enough for a meal.

With giant blue gills almost jumping out of the hole it was hard to move, but we decided to try our luck on a nearby walleye lake. We set up on a small flat in 32fow near a deep hole of 60fow, about an hour before dark. This type of area is notorious for holding hungry walleye in search of an easy meal in the low light periods. We hopped around this flat working each hole for a few minutes with a variety of jigging spoons. If we didn’t see action on the locator right away we’d hop to the next hole. A Perch/Gold jigging spoon, tipped with a whole fat head was the best bait by far. The slow falling action of this bait was irresistible to these fish. We also had tip-ups set out with a number of different lures, but on this particular day a chartreuse jig and a minnow hooked threw the back took top honors, producing most of our set line fish. Again we ended up icing what could have been a couple limits of walleye, but we just kept some of the good eating size fish 15”-18”.

About an hour after dark we packed up the walleye gear and headed to a lake for a late night crappie bite. We were back to fishing a bay type area in about 15fow. The typical way to catch these crappie is to put down a couple set rods with a jig/minnow under a float and wait, but on this evening they wanted an actively-worked jig and larva. In fact we switched back to our light action sunfish rods rigged with the horizontal jigs. It didn’t take the guys long to figure out the cat and mouse game these crappie love to play. It seemed like the faster they pulled the bait away the faster the fish committed to hitting the bait. Over the span of a couple hours these guys caught 40+ crappie. Even though many were on the small side they found some very nice eater fish mixed in.

With all the great fishing lakes in the area, it’s still a special day when you head out in the afternoon and pull off the “Alexandria Trifecta” (a limit of three different game fish) by bedtime. These guys may have caught their limits but being the true sportsmen they are they only kept enough for a couple meals. Thanks guys for a great day on the ice!

It’s days like this that keep the passion for ice fishing pumping through my veins. We have a solid 10-12” of ice on most of the lakes in the Alexandria area and the weekend forecast looks beautiful, so come on up and enjoy one of the many great fishing opportunities the area has to offer!