I arrived in Baudette with ATV and fishhouse in tow at the start of last week’s cold front with single digit temps with a cool breeze out of the NW. The plan this year is to place the wheelhouse in shallow water, in and around 17′ and move around with ATVs and Otters in tow during the day to fish deeper waters.
I arrived about 3 hours prior to my other friend’s showed up and I found a hot bite in the shack towards dusk. Even with the cold front showing it’s presense, the bite was hot and steady for quality fish in the 16-18" range, with a 25" walleye to boot. Unfortunately, my camera was frozen, I was alone and it fogged up. No proof.
As darkness arrived the bite continued on, something quite odd for Lake of the Woods standards. My friend, Aaron, landed the largest walleye of the trip at 6:30 pm. It was a promising sign so far…
The next morning we found an excellent morning bite and it was decided that it would be best to remain in the shack for the day and see what develops. It was fantastic, almost all fish were quality 15-19" with some nice slots also.
That evening we also ran into some pike, including the monster gator of my dreams. This fish managed to snag every line in the house during the fight no matter how fast we all attempted to pull lines from the water. It was a long battle, I had it to the 10" hole three times and the head of this monster was 9" wide, almost filling the width of the hole. We got some wonderful side body views in the attempts, and this girl easily filled the entire hole. It became a real struggle to pull all the snagged lines off my hands and fight the fish….pure chaos. I loved every minute, up until the beast made a run for the depths and my hand-by-hand battle ended with the mono leader wrapped around the string on my hooded sweatshirt, tightened itself and snapped. The loudest line snap we’ve ever heard, unfortunately.
We also covered some ground during the day out in the depths of the basin with not too much to show for it. The bite really slowed down during the morning, day and evening day by day for us. The weather wasn’t stable with cold front one day, warm front the next and another cold front for our final day.
However, the night bite was something to be much desired, every night! I can’t tell you how many quality fish in the 20"+ range we caught (and released of course) at night in the shallows. By far the biggest surprise of the trip. These fish were not overly aggressive to jigging, but one 23" fish we caught rolled in and ate 3 rattle reel lines in very short order; some were very hungry!
We found very clear water in the shallows and I think this attributed to some great night time action. Oh, the ‘pout were hungry too that gave us lots of laughs.
Travel was very easy out there with hardly any snow and lots of bare ice on the east side of the lake. Ice was in great shape.
Great report Chuck ill be headin up ta da LOTW on thursday night the 19th about midnight 1am with a group of 8 guys … did you find any colors that worked for you guys better then others we found 2 weeks ago they seemed to like larger spoons in green orange or silver in about 16 to 25 ft for the larger eyes n sauger in 30+ all day .
1/8 oz gold Slender Spoon was the hot ticket and I lost limited inventory to other big fish.
I tried a mixture of other lures and all had mixed results. If it was too aggressive during the tougher bite periods, they wanted nothing to do with it.
Pink/white jigs and gold jigs were the best, hooked with a fathead – dead sticking or rattle reel set up. Ran out of all those too. I need to go shopping again.
A night bite on LOW is something you don’t hear of very often, it makes for a fun evening/night if those rattle wheels go off. I have always thought the night bite was nonexistent on LOW? That pike sounded like a beast, at least you got to see her.
Sounds like a fun trip.
No pictures?
I’ve always wondered about the night bite.
To me, and I’ll start off by saying I don’t have any experience up there…the whole “no night bite” thing sounded like my dad’s story on Winni. There they said there was no morning bite, but that turned out to be false. Well, sort of. If your hung over and not fishing, there’s no morning bite.
Just saying the fish only eat during the daylight really cuts into the feeding times in the winter…doesn’t it?
Nice Report there Chuck…even without the pout pictures.
Just for you, Brian. The only pose with a pout. Most came at night when I chose to sleep, nobody wanted to be a photographer.
My friend is the pout king…
Thanks for the report. Heading up there tomorrow to see if I still have it.
Chuck:
Way cool! Thanks for the report. James and I saw that this December as well, unusual water clarity for that lake. Interesting to see that the walleyes up shallow are putting it to good use. Thanks again man, wish I would’ve been up there with you!
Joel
Great report Chuck!
I gotta ask, is the gun case in the corner to protect against one of those monster sturgeon?
I knew a comment would come up on the gun case…I couldn’t hide it.
No guns involved, just my friend’s rod transport case.
Great report…A few buddies and I are heading there next week
I cant wait!!!
Joel,
I watched your video again and noticed you guys were fishing in about the same depth we were. I wonder if we fished the same general area… Quite interesting to see the fish active in that shallow sand for this length of time. I’ve never fished shoreline (shallow) on LOW before, only shallow reefs. It will definitely add another option to future trips…
Just got back to town from LOTW fishing was awsome we caught alot of nice eater’s 14 to 18 out in deeper water between 30-34 ft during the day biggist fich of the weekend was a 25 1/3 came on a gold n red stop sign tipd with half a shiner we got a few others alot of small sag.N eye’s n toolies n 6 pout all over 20in …cant wait to go back hope to be up there again in a week er two
