The warm weather and then the cool down made it easier to get around the lake with a four-wheel drive vehicle. There is deep snow and some slush pockets in areas that can cause trouble, but overall you can get around pretty easy. There are only a few areas that the snow melted down to bare ice. As long as you watch where you are going you shouldn’t have to get out the shovel, but bring it long just in case! Be careful near the banks of plowed roads. Along with the cooler weather came a little tougher fishing conditions.
We got out on the water on Monday at about one o’clock and started fishing the same area as our previous outing on the south end of the lake near Judd’s Resort. We moved around in the general vicinity looking for some good numbers of big perch. If there were any big numbers around, we didn’t find them or they stayed belly to the bottom. We managed to squeak out twenty for the afternoon and planned to hit it harder the following morning when the wind was forecast to be more pleasant.
We started back on the same spot in the morning and only had a few fish to show for about a half hour’s effort. It didn’t take long to decide to start moving. We planned on staying on the move until we found more concentrated fish. It took us nearly four hours, six different areas, and two tanks of gas on the auger before we found a concentration of fish willing to bite. We were just about ready to throw in the towel and elsewhere for bluegills when we finally found the fish.
We found the fish around the outer edge of a mud hump in about thirty feet of water. All of the areas we fished had small fish around, but this particular hump was just loaded with baitfish. All of the holes we drilled on the top of the hump were stacked with small fish from the bottom to five or ten feet off the bottom. The large perch on the outer edge were spitting up both YOY perch and mayfly larvae. The quality of these fish was very good and they were well worth the work we had to put in looking for them.
On a side note, when we were out around looking for fish, we did catch about five tulibee, a few walleye, a pike and even a big ole sucker.
The last picture is a few Clearwater gills Piper(my lab), Matt, and I caught on a short venture this morning.
Thanks for the post, haven’t seen one in awhile. Some buds and I are headed out early tomorrow morning, and I was concerned about travel on the ice out of Denny’s. We will be up there through sunday. Sounds like the winds will be pretty harsh, and the temps not real warm. Guess we won’t have to worry about the beer getting warm
. I will definately post sunday or monday when we get back.
wiswalleyenut
Hello fished winnie tuesday 3-8 and did not too good we went out of dennys his roads for the most part are terrible we mustered 25 fish between the 2 of us drilling about 60 holes if we get more warm weather the roads will be undriveable
Them perch sure do look tasty
I’ll second that Jeff
Resorts have a tough time doing anything with roads this time of the year. We spent more time driving around off the roads than we did on them. We had a ATV along with us both days and we never used it. There were some areas that we detoured around to get where we wanted to go, but we got to the areas we wanted to fish without any problems. Like Jeremy said, warm weather will turn the roads into a mess.
The current weather slowed fishing down, but I fish by the philosophy that the fish are always biting somewhere. That somewhere took us a while to find on Tuesday. We were just about ready to throw in the towel, but when we found them, the bells and whistles should have been going off because we hit the jackpot.
The last three trips to winnie have all been very successful. However I only said successful not easy. This trip Topped them all. We both had plenty of rest and left the beer at home, and we were pooped. I’ll just say it again. I’ve never worked so hard for fish. But what a reward! All three times its paid off with limits of fish. Like Adam said, We didn’t get on numbers of respectable fish until late afternoon. On tuesday the fishhouse didn’t get taken out of my truck until around 2 pm. I can’t stress enough how important it is to be mobile. After all the hard work, tired arms and legs, Sunburned face, chapped lips I was ready to fall over on the ice and have a good old toddler tantrum, When all of sudden we found them 200 holes later. And we had a great time
We fished out of denny’s on the 10th 11th and 12th. Fishing was ok, but nothing to brag about. Caught most fish in 25-27 fow on half minnows. Biggest excitement was getting off the lake on friday. It was complete white out conditions, so thank god for the gps. We helped push out a local who them gave us directions to where we caught most of our fish. Guess it pays to be a good guy once in awhile. Had alot of lookers while jigging, but most fish caught were full of halgamites. We will be back in early June for them eyes and I can’t wait.
wiswalleyenut