Lake Macbride Ice Fishing Report 12.17.07

Where do I begin? I am still shaking from the fishing experience I just encountered. I was working at the shop this afternoon, close to Lake Macbride, and I decided that I would try my luck with the walleyes tonight. I got on the lake around 3:15 PM. What I would encounter in the next hour would be unbelievable.

I began punching holes in search of some underwater rock flats. I punched about 20 holes, checking the depth of the ice in each hole. There was only about 3″. I am always very hesitant to fish Macbride during early ice, because I don’t fish the community spots, so I am usually one of the first to go out on the main lake. That’s either stupid, or smart depending on how you look at it! Today would be no different, there were no footprints in the snow as far as the eye could see. It is a little eery out there especially with all of the snow cover on the lake. Each first ice on macbride you can run into variable ice conditions on different parts of the lake. Some areas will have five good inches of ice, and you got twenty yards in any direction and the ice can become life threatening thin. This is where I would like to emphasize, if you are going to go onto the main lake- BE careful, the ice is very thin in areas.

So after I punched some holes, I found the rock flat I was looking for and began fishing. I was targeting walleyes, so I was using my new 36″ thorne walleye rod. If you haven’t felt this rod yet, it is built for flatheads. I was marking fish, but I assumed they were blue-gills as they wouldn’t hit my spoon. I checked all of the holes in the area, and didn’t like what I was seeing. So I decided to pack up and move to the next flat. I began punching holes again, only this time I wanted to concentrate on deeper water, so I ventured even further out into the main lake.

I dropped the transducer in the hole, and the bottom of the screen was lit up like a Christmas tree. I thought oh great, more blue gills. I decided what the heck, and dropped the spoon down again. I mean, those could have been walleyes right? Wrong! As the spoon was free falling I saw about four or five returns absolutely go screaming kamikaze style up to my lure. One fish got to it first and absolutely destroyed it. At this point, I am thinking I have a HUGE walleye on, the fight lasted about ten minutes and I never saw the fish, the treble got hooked in the bottom of the hole, and the fish got off.
As I sat there, I was so angry, because I thought I had a monster walleye just get off at the hole. Then I gathered myself, and dropped back down again, same story, the fish absolutely crushed my spoon. This one I landed, and it was a 20″+ whitebass. These fish fought so hard, and had such a great attitude. They were giving my new rod all the work it could handle.

I was using the new lightning spoon from custom jigs and spins for the majority of these fish, tipped with no bait. These fish weren’t concerned about bait. The color was black/silver foil. After I mistakenly caught these fish, I began fishing for them- and had an absolute blast for about one hour.
Key to staying on these roaming machines was to stay with the shad. The LX-5 played a tremendous role in helping me stay on these fish. As I would hole hop, and mark shad, I would begin jigging below them. They would vanish off of the screen, and no more than two seconds later I would get hammered. I believe the way I was presenting the baits, these fish thought they were getting a wounded shad that couldn’t get away as quick as the others. Having a high quality flasher makes this type of fishing fun and easy. Also, leaving the flasher in the wide beam transducer allowed me to find bigger populations of shad.

About the first photo- I had a jigging rap on my perch rod- I broke off my spoon on a big fish- So instead of retying, I opted to drop the other bait down. And I kid you not, I caught both of those fish on one bait. One was hooked on the front hook, and the other on the back. Try getting those fish through one hole for fun sometime.

If you have never experienced a white bass bite through the ice- I would recommend it highly. I would go as far as to say that this type of fishing is even more exhilarating than fishing for huge walleyes. These fish never gave up, and I will also say that this was my best ice fishing experience to date, I am still shaking!!

I know where I will be all day tomorrow!!

All fish were released!
Good luck, stay safe, and we’ll see you on the hard water!