NE SD Gills & Slabs

By scottsteil 0

I just got back from the first of many trips I will be running to South Dakota this winter. Once again the fishing in the NE corner of the state proved to be excellent, although the fishing never really ceases to amaze me. This beautiful area of SD is the multi-species anglers paradise. Whether you are after Perch, Walleye, Bluegill, Crappie or Pike the lakes in the Waubay area have it all.

We were greeted Friday by a stiff breeze and mere –11 degree temperature. I don’t know how to calculate wind chill but I can verify that it was extremely cold and hard on exposed skin. The good news was the extreme temperatures didn’t seem to effect the bite much. The nicest fish for the afternoon was this dandy 14.5-inch Jumbo Perch caught on a Go Devil jigging spoon tipped with the head of a minnow. We managed a nice mixed bag of Crappie, Bluegill, Perch, Pike and Walleye on Friday.

Saturday we spent much of the day chasing Bluegill on Pickeral and Enemy Swim lakes. The bite on both lakes was excellent but the overall size of the Bluegill was not what we were looking for. We did manage to get some gills up to 9.3 inches, but not the trophies we were looking for. Most of the gills were similar to these pictured, nice 8-9 inch eaters. We targeted fish as shallow as 6ft in the weeds and also fished 28-30 ft and got fish at each depth. One real exciting thing was once again the Red Glow Mini Mert seemed to be the ticket. We tried just about everything but the Red Glow Mini Mert hands down produced the biggest gills again.

We also spent some time chasing giant crappies. One of the guys in the group really wanted to catch a trophy slab so we took some time to hunt down the big ones. Although we did not catch many, we did find 6 crappies that went 14 inches. All the crappies were from the same 1998 year class and weighed 1lb 12 ounces. Picture here is Greg with his trophy slab 14 slab.

We did not target Pike on this trip but we did catch pike up to 9 pounds on our ultralight panfish rods. We also did not fish walleye much but caught plenty for a meal while fishing panfish. Most of the walleye came in 21 ft of water and hit jigging spoons or just about anything else you put down there.

Again, this is just the first of many trips I will run to SD this winter. As always, this one proved to be really exciting. The last picture is my new Otter II Cottage. You will rarely find me sitting in a fish house, but this weekend, even I enjoyed the protection of a portable. Did I mention it was really cold!!

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scottsteil

5 Time FLW/RCL Championship Qualifier Sponsors: Ranger Boats, Evinrude Outboards, Minn Kota, Humminbird, Rapid Marine, Berkley, MarCum, Strikemaster, Otter Outdoors, Lakemaster, Custom Jigs and Spins.

0 Comments

  3. Scott

    Did you use the #8’s or the smaller #10’s? Are you sticking with the 2# berkley vanish flouro or did you go even lighter given how clear the water was? My understanding is you had 16 FOOT visibility.

  4. Scott~
    Thanks for the report.. Nice fish..
    James~
    Are you giving us some hints here? #10 or #8
    Berkley Vanish Flouro?
    I absorb all these little hints and I assume I already got the baits from B Fish N..

  5. Quote:

    James~

    Are you giving us some hints here? #10 or #8

    Berkley Vanish Flouro?

    Hints? Heck no! I want answers so I can get rigged up to go fishing with Scott here in a few days. And I don’t take getting outfished very well at all so I want to be prepared.

  9. Great Report! I love that area. Sounds like you guys really hunted with success.

    Was the Indlam/Indian Bay area pretty busy for the gills?

    thanks for the great report

    Todd

  10. Sorry guys, I guess I left out a lot of details. The ice was in great shape. We had 18-19 inches on all the lakes. I drove my 1/2 Ton Diesel on all the lakes, although I did break through on an old sunken road bed in 10 inches of water (it scared the crap out of the guys with me )

    Yes, 2lb Berkely vanish is a must as we could see down 16ft in ALL the lakes. They have not had much rain in NE SD so the lakes are very clean and clear this year.

    As for jigs, the smallest Mini Mert you can get Dave to paint will be the ticket The bite was good but they were still finicky at times.

    The Perch fishing was excellent. We had a lot of 11 plus inch perch with a few trophy caliber fish included. The one pictured was the biggest but I believe there were two others that were close.

    We did catch those 6 dandy crappies but we also caught about 50 smaller ones. I didn’t mean to make it sound like the crappie fishing was slow, just that we only had 6 of the 14 inchers.

    Yes Todd, Indian was busy as always but they are the typical smaller mid winter fish in there right now. Plenty of smaller eaters if a person was looking for them.

  12. On the trip we kept a nice mess of gills to eat and a few perch and walleye. In addition we kept two of the big crappies and the big perch to enter into a local contest. I don’t make it a practice to keep big fish but here is a picture I snapped while cleaning fish. The crappies are 14 inches..how about that perch

  13. Scott, I have very limited knowledge as to how the indian reservations work as it relates to allowing people to access the lakes within it’s boundaries. As the case in MN; don’t get caught on the wrong side of URL. Do these rules vary from reservation to reservation? Do you need permission to use the lakes mentioned in your report?

  16. We are not fishing a reservation or anything, that is just the name of a bay on Enemy that is popular for fishing. There is a reservation just across the road that is off limits for fishing.

    I have heard you can obtain a permit to hunt and fish on the reservations in SD but have never done it and don’t know much about the process.

  20. WOW! Great fish, sounds like a good time. I hope to be fortunate enough to make a trip out there someday. Thanks for the report.

  22. WOW, great fish and great report! good luck at the GTG this weekend to all attending. Scott do you have any lx-3 ready to go? were getting close again, just tell james to keep those darn ice auger deals off the site and ill have a flasher in no time .

  23. Great fish and pics guys….. I also love that area of SD as I fished it for the first time a couple years back and plan on making the trip at least once every winter from now on.

    Layne

  25. Welcome to IDA Layne. Hope you can make it to Sherman with us this weekend. It sounds like we will be going on Sat. now.

  26. Well James..sounds like that vanish flouro really did the trick….along with some of Dave’s super jigs. I was REALLY IMPRESSED at the paint quality on all the jigs and spoons I purchased from him…just fantastic.

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