Lake of the Woods, MN – 1/9/09 & 1/10/09

This past weekend was spent with friends and family for our annual ice fishing trip that brought us to Big Traverse Bay on Lake of the Woods. We went into the weekend with tempered expectations from recent poor reports. I would like to say we were able to make lemonade out of lemons, but that just wasn’t the case this trip.

We lifted our heads off the pillow on Friday morning and were greeted with a minus 30 degrees temp. Fortunately, there was no wind to compound the frigid temperature. At the morning “Captains” meeting we decided we would try to set up near Morris Point Gap in 27 FOW on Friday. Saturday we started out in 30 FOW and moved into 17 FOW for the evening bite. We covered a little bit of ground.

The bite up there is far from dead. It’s just not up to standards that we all come to expect when we travel up to the ice fishing mecca. We fished in pairs and each house had ~20 fish/day. The vast majority of the fish caught were saugers. There was a lot of sorting required and each house brought home ~ a half dozen fish each day. Many of the saugers were in the 9-10″ range.

Let’s chat about what seemed to be working. In terms of presentations, offerings under a float took top honors. They wanted a shiner seductively dangling in front of their face. I found using a jig that is similar to the Frisbee jig out produced using a colored hook. The jig I was using was not an actual Frisbee jig. I was able to increase my hooking ratio by straightening the hook shaft and making it slightly off-set. Under conditions when the bite is more difficult I find it’s especially critical to make these minor modifications to improve results. Please note if you purchase the Frisbee jig, this modification wouldn’t be necessary. I experimented with the use of rainbow chubs, but they didn’t produce nearly as well as the local river shiners. I was told before I went up that shiners were harder to procure this year, but we didn’t have any trouble finding them.

There were several different jigging spoons styles that worked well for our group. Any of the metallic colors worked well. I personally like a spoon that is hammered gold on one side and chartreuse on the other. Subtle jigging action worked better than being too aggressive. At times not jigging at all would entice a strike.

We found 24″ of ice, so it won’t be too long with the cold temps that it’s time to talk about packing your auger extensions.

We fished for a few hours on Red Lake on Sunday. We didn’t find the grass to be much greener there either.

Best of luck to you on your next ice fishing adventure.

Sully