Early Ice Walleye Report, Alexandria

I’ll start off with a quick ice report. Most of the smaller, shallower lakes froze over about a week ago and most of the larger lakes locked up during the Thanksgiving cold snap. I’ve been checking the ice conditions on a number of lakes and I’ve found anywhere from 4”-6” of solid clear ice. The ice that formed early last week had just a light covering of snow. This made it very easy to see when each body of water froze.

As for this current storm, it looks like we are going to luck out and only get a couple inches of blowing snow. Granted this won’t help the lakes make ice, but I don’t think it’s going to hurt it too much either.

Now for the fishing report. Most of the areas I fish during early ice I’ve scouted thoroughly throughout the open water season. The spots that get to the top of my list are usually transition areas near deep water with good weed cover. These areas will hold plenty of bait and are perfect feeding areas for hungry walleye!

Sunday evening, a friend and I fished one of these areas. As I usually do, I used my Lazer hand auger to quietly punch a number of holes ranging from 15′-25′ FOW over the area. The shallower holes were on the edge of a rock bar with some standing vegetation mixed in. The deeper holes were beyond the rock to sand transition area and sitting on mostly a sand bottom.

We placed one tip-up on the bottom side of the break in the sand and one on the top side over the shallow rocks. With our other lines we opted to hole hop with jigging spoons tipped with a half or whole minnow.

As usual, the deep tip-up showed the first signs of life, and this signaled the beginning of the evening walleye bite we were waiting for. There’s nothing like the first flag of the year, and it yielded a solid 17” walleye.

As the sun fell we noticed an increasing number of fish in the area, and they were moving like clock work up the break to feed. We continued to have great action over the next hour with a decent number of fish in the 14”-18” range. Most of our bites were on the tip-ups, and we noticed if we added any action to our jigging spoon at all the fish were gone.

The walleye fishing over the next few weeks is generally the most productive time period of the winter, but keep in mind that there is always unsafe ice, even in mid winter. That’s why I always recommend people do their homework. Be aware of any areas with moving water or areas that are notorious for not freezing well. One of the easiest ways to do this is to ask the local bait shop about the particular body of water you plan to fish. Another source is to use your handheld GPS with a Lake Master chip. Lake Master maps clearly show any creeks, rivers or other problem areas like narrows where there’s possible water flow that may keep ice from forming. In the end, if you’re educated about your body of water and take your time, you can truly eliminate the risk factor from fishing early ice. Good luck!