Report

Thought I’d give a very quick report of our trip to LOTW this weekend. Fished in the Pine Island area, beautiful weekend. Monday it snowed pretty hard, as did it today, but the weather overall couldn’t be beat. Everywhere we went, we measured 11″ of ice. Lots of small trucks, and several full-size, were driving all over the ice, even past Pine. Bit too early for me to be doing that. The bite was excellent, and we caught somewhere around 125-150 fish in two days. We mostly fished shallow, which is where it’s at if you’re looking for the piggies. As usual, mornings and evenings were best. Caught walleye, sauger, tulibee, and those nasty-looking eelpout. All sizes of ‘eyes were caught, superfat fish, too. Future looks great up there. My hand doesn’t look too bad, either, considering I stuck a treble hook through it! I don’t recommend it, even if you’re bored. If you’re into some serious ice action, now’s the time to get your keister up to LOTW!

Mark

hey mark… thanks for the invite to go along. what a bummr I couldn’t have made it from the sounds of your report. any mega-momma walleye like the one’s you’re holding in your mug shot? Was it a jig n’ minnow bite or did spoons come into play?

Thanks much in advance!

Yeah, there was one. Lost it at the bottom of the hole due to “technical difficulties”. Gold and pink jig with an emerald shiner produced consistently, as always. The spoon bite came into play big-time, though. We caught fish on a wide variety of lures, with one particular jig and the Angel Eyes probably accounting for the majority. Knew it would be good after the first morning because we didn’t ice an eye that wasn’t a keeper. We had a great time and can’t wait to get back up there at the beginning of January.

Mark

Mark,

Thanks for the report on your trip. Sounds like you guys had a ball. (Even after being stuck like a pig with a treble!! )
How shallow were you finding your morning and evening fish?
Were the fish suspended at all or did they come off the bottom to drill your pink and gold jigs?

We are heading up there the day after x-mas to take part in the fun as well! Thanks again for the report!

Steve, How long are you going to stay? We’re thinking of coming up the 27th and 28th.

Steve, we were finding the fish in 15′ of water during the peak periods. When they shut off, though, they really shut off. If you find a good bite and then don’t get bit for more than a couple minutes, move immediately. I was hoping to see some suspended piggies come rolling through like they did last year, but no such luck. During the day, we found a lot of sauger to be in 23 feet of water. Didn’t really matter what you threw at them, but they wanted the bait jigged just the right way and they’d come flying off the bottom. Good luck on your trip and let us know how it goes. We’re back up there around the 9th of January.

Mark

Chappy,

We will be up there from Friday until sunday night. The plan is to fish LOTW morning and early afternoon and head to Red for the evening bite. If the crappie bite is off the mark a bit, we may elect to fish LOTW the entire time?
I will report back when I return.

Thanks again for the info Mark!