Lake Winnipeg Ice Report 03/15-03/18

Greenbacks!!!!! Lake Winnipeg, what a fishery. This 3rd annual trip for the “Here we go” fishing crew has come and gone, memories will be forever etched as this trip was definitely a trip to remember! The 10 of us packed into 2 vehicles, 2 enclosed trailers with 6 snowmobiles, 1 wheeler with tracks, and 6 Otters for the 7hour drive ahead of us. Lots of anticipation of what LW (Lake Winnipeg) could deliver as just one year ago we were fishing in T-Shirts on the same lake. This year was a completely opposite; cold, windy, snow, and 42” of ice spread out on the 11th largest freshwater lake in the world.

Negative temps and high winds greeted us at the landing early Friday morning yet we anxious to get fishing. We stayed close to the Chalet Beach access about 2 miles northeast, found a nice ice heave and it was game on. Most people fished with some sort of rattle bait to call these fish to our area, as LW is really featureless in terms of structure. Majority of the guys fished with the 1/4oz Pink/White Blade bait from BfishN tackle, as this lure proved in years prior to be very productive. Sub zero windshields found most of us using 8-10lb mono instead of the typical braid for line, laced onto your favorite walleye reel with a medium action rod.

It didn’t take long to call some fish into the area, but it wasn’t the size that LW is known for so we kept moving along this break line in ½ mile increments to find a new school of fish hopefully the bigger females staging to run up the Red River for spawning. Each move would produce fish very early and then taper off as the schools were not very big, which meant lots of moving vs. waiting for the fish to come to us. Put up the Otters and take them down every ½ hour did grow old but most moves were worth it as usually one person in the group would stick a nice fish. With the cold front in full force we sometimes had to finesse these fish with the blade baits or switch over to the 1/4oz slender spoon tipped with a minnow to get bit.

Saturday and Sunday both had high winds and cold temps, but we stuck with our game plan and finally stumbled onto a bigger school of fish with some very big LW fish coming topside, once again proving that LW does have a lot to offer to those who are willing to put in the effort. This trip by far was the most amount of work we have had to do to find our fish, drilling thru 40+” of ice, sub zero wind-chills, and very high winds all proved to be well worth the effort as the pictures shown all have big smiles as there are not many places you can go and catch the numbers of big walleyes. Biggest fish was 30.5”
and was pushing 12lbs, 29.75” that was 11.6lb, and a 26” that weighed 9.13lbs, lots of other 24-26” fish as well as a huge number of eater fish in the 15-18” range.
The travel home was a complete disaster, left early Monday morning from LW, greeted with fresh snow and stronger winds, resulting in blizzard conditions til we hit the border then Interstate shut-down in Pembina ND. Found a hotel and waited out the storm! Needless to say it was a smart move and we are all safely home to fish another day!