2011 Last Ice Report.

Well unfortunately all good things must come to an end, this weekend was the end of my 2010-2011 ice seasons and it ended with a huge bang. When fellow icehead Matt Grow calls I know we are always up for an adventure and this weekend was no different. Plans were to get an early start to the weekend heading north fish hard hit a few different lakes to make it home at a reasonable hour. Well as you know since I am typing this, things couldn’t go that easy. First lake was closed due to the Forest Service Center closing all vehicle traffic on the forest roads and this was our prime lake we wanted to try, OUCH. So now we are firing up our H2O’s to see who has the closest waypoints for late season panfish. Between Matt and me it was almost 60 miles away, so off we went. Ice conditions were about perfect, shoreline was holding well, the overall depth of the ice was about 18 inches or so, but was fading fast. Quickly after drilling out an area we knew this lake wasn’t going to be our lake today, so again outcome the H2O’s. We soon found ourselves loading the wheeler and down the road we went.

Lake three was considered a “slamdunk” lake. You know the one where you can always seem to catch fish and most of the time those fish are very good quality and quantity, but of course this day things were not on the right track fishing wise. This lake was further north but we found deteriorating ice conditions, but we did see 3 trucks on this body of water. It appears that common sense was fading fast in the area northern Minnesota as we found a few holes less than 10 inches of rotten ice. Trying to salvage the day we simply went to a lake that had given Matt success in the past, things couldn’t go any worse so we were very optimistic. Late ice fishing should be somewhat fun/easy, right? Well I am sure glad we had extra gas in the monster box for the augers as we needed it. It was a lot of hard work to scratch together some nicer perch for the early evening bite, but we were in search of crappies and sunfish. So we teamed up with a couple of locals from the area as they were in search of the same fish, so if either of us found them we could stay on the school easier with 4 guys vs. 2 guys.

We drilled a new area like we have been all day and just like someone flipped a switch we found those suspended fish about 2 feet off the bottom, lowering the jig down these fish raced up to meet the jig and inhale. We soon found ourselves on a nice school of big crappies! Simple Ratso’s from Custom Jigs& Spins tipped with eurolarve was the winning combo. For the next 2 hours it was on like Donk crappies ( sorry Granrud, had to do it). It sure felt good to have somewhat of a plan come together at the end of a very long exhausting day. Crappie after crappie, then sunfish after sunfish throwing in a few rock bass, walleye, largemouth , and even bigger perch, the day couldn’t have ended any better. In fact it was a perfect way to end the ice season.

Overall Matt and I put 420 miles on his truck in one day so if I was to take anything away from this trip with Matt, is staying positive on a very tough late season bite. Knowing that one more drilled hole could land you on the mother load school you have been looking for all day. Also working together within a group of people even if you don’t know each other, we are all out in search for a common goal. Lots of people to thank for once again a safe ice fishing season, too many to mention right now, however my family is first on the list.

Well that’s it for me on the ice for 2010-2011, up next Rainy River walleyes.
Till next time.