New lake new adventures!!! Ice fishing a new lake for the first time for me usually yields great excitement, especially when looking online at MN Dnr Lake finder (see link in reply post) to see the size of the fish that have been surveyed as well as the number of fish surveyed. With a little bit of pre-fishing on the computer at home this particular lake proved to back those numbers very well.
This lake was a simple bowl type lake with a few sunken humps, main lake points, and deep wintering holes to target, thanks to lakemaster chip finding these few key areas was a simple find, in fact we were able to drive right to the first spot, open the truck door and drill out the structure knowing we were in the right location. Early morning fishing had us fishing in about 15 fow on one of the main lake points that extended out well into the lake. Immediately we were greeted with some active sunfish aggressively chasing the “zebra” gill pill
As the morning wore on these shallow fish became non existent, simply following this extended underwater point closer to the deeper wintering holes started to show life again on the Marcum. This time these fish were suspended over this deeper water…Yep Crappies..lots of them and big ones too.. Using the same presentation as earlier the crappie chase was on. Coaxing crappie to bite is fun…sometimes you can get a fish to move as much as 6 feet up chasing your jig before it finally commits almost like playing cat and mouse game with crappies
Some of my most vivid memories of fishing are not of catching fish, but more so how we got to this particular body of water and how we used today’s technology to increase our odds of catching these fish. Utilizing the MN DNR website allows you to basically pre-fish at home. Same is true with Lakemaster, the Contour Pro computer software will allow you search the lake for key structure before you even hit the ice. Understanding and adapting this technology in my opinion will help improve your odds of catching more fish and hopefully more trophy fish, the fish still have to bite…that is where you come in, however putting yourself in productive water will increase your odds of catching more fish. Give these tools a try a home next time before you hit a new body of water, til next time…..see you on the ice.
MN Dnr Lake finder
Lakemaster Pro Contour
I am not to familiar with other states if they have this info available or not, check with your state conservation site. Its a great tool!
Great Job Cal!
Thanks for the tips and report, well done
Great Report Cal. Looks like some nice gills and pies.
Great read Cal, picking apart new waters is always a blast and good for testing an ice nuts skills.
Them are some dandy gills you guys found
Nice write-up Cal! Like always I can count on an adventure when hitting the ice with you.
….25 more days to Rainy Lake 
Not gonna lie, getting pretty excited!!
so many lakes, so little time, it sure is nice when a plan developed way ahead of time works out. Great report.
Great job using the tools of the trade Calvin……nice looking panfish!
On the lakefinder creel survey, what did you look for that made you decide? Tons of variables but was it the avg.size and sheer numbers? Larger avg. size with lower gill numbers? Pressure and access?
Just curious how you started your search.
Nice pannies Cal
Great question Jeff…..I am focusing my efforts on when the last survey was done..i.e. 2005-2007 and focusing on 6-8 inch panfish. Looking for good numbers of these sized fish in the last lake survey knowning these fish will grow and now should be approaching trophy size (greater than 9″). Also focus on access points to the lake, some of the best panfish lakes will NOT have a public access they will either have private access or state land surrounding the lake, which is public so fire up the snowmobile and find a way onto these lakes.
here is an example sorry didn’t copy over very welll
Length of Selected Species Sampled for the 2006 Survey Year
Species Number of fish caught in each category (inches)
0-5 6-8 9-11 12-14 15-19 20-24 25-29 30+
black bullhead 0 2 4 49 0 0 0 0 55
black crappie 8 36 12 0 0 0 0 0 56
bluegill 85 107 2 0 0 0 0 0 194
bowfin (dogfish) 0 0 0 0 2 13 9 0 24
brown bullhead 0 0 3 89 7 0 0 0 99
common carp 0 0 0 1 1 9 4 0 15
largemouth bass 0 1 3 1 2 0 0 0 7
northern pike 0 0 1 2 27 52 15 3 100
pumpkinseed 22 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 32
rock bass 3 9 5 2 0 0 0 0 19
smallmouth bass 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1
tullibee (cisco) 0 0 0 24 17 0 0 0 41
walleye 0 2 21 54 26 20 7 0 130
white sucker 0 0 0 0 9 2 0 0 11
yellow bullhead 2 14 151 201 1 0 0 0 369
yellow perch 64 96 27 0 0 0 0 0 187
Above is a copy of a lake that will remain nameless but as you can see it has potential for sunfish in the trophy size since 2006..
107 fish in the 6″-8″ range and 2 fish in the 9″-11″ range…
Maybe a great lake for walleyes as well……