Heading out to Devils Lake

On Thursday I’m heading out to Devils Lake, ND for 4 days. Has anyone been out recently? I haven’t been out there in about 10 years. I’m getting excited to be back out there.

We are also going out Thursday. Been a trip a year for the last 5 yrs. Staying at Lakeside Lodge. Sounds like the bite has been pretty good pulling spinners in 21-22 ‘ of water and along weed edges. Crawlers…

With Canada closed, we are heading out there in August for a week at Woodland Resort. We’ll have 3 guys in the boat, so figuring on what, 5-6 dozen crawlers/day?
What is the best way to get and store all those crawlers? Just buy them each day? Order flats and try to keep cool?

Don’t forget the leeches

Speedy worm in Alexandria. Can buy however many you need. Look them uyp online. Remember though you cannot take leeches across state line.

It is mandatory to have the ND AIS sticker on all non resident boats. You can buy it online and carry your paperwork with you till your sticker arrives in the mail.

Good thing I popped on here today..Did not know about the sticker.

On the sticker I emailed NDG&F Dept. about it. My question was why only NR boats needed the sticker. The answer I received was ND residents are paying the fee on their boat registration. Don’t know if that is true or not.

Thanks for the info. I’ll let you know how it goes!

What is sticker for was just there and never had a sticker. Woops

The sticker is in part to raise awareness of ANS and seeing it on your boat provides proof to a Game Warden proof that you paid a $15 fee to help fund the fight against ANS in North Dakota waters. It’s state law and personally, I think it’s a pretty good idea.
There is a fine if you don’t have the ANS sticker on your boat you’re caught without one.

Link: https://gf.nd.gov/watercraft/registration

Yes, residents pay the AIS fee with our registration. Leeches are walleye candy up here.

Pulling spinners, slip bobbers in trees and of course vertical jigging are some easy go to strategies.

The wind can make DL nasty. There are quite a few boat ramps to use to avoid the wind.

If I’m feeling brave I’ll pull a spinner a foot above the snags near shore with the rod in the holder. And pitch crankbaits towards the shore line.

You can have 2 lines per angler in the summer. 4 in the winter.

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1. WebpageDVLBoatingAccess-1.pdf

Also please be aware that this year they changed the regulations regarding transporting of fillets. If you zipper a filet each individual piece of meat counts as a filet.

We had a pretty good trip. The first two days we fished deeper (18-30 feet) and found lots of small fish. Had to work pretty hard to find fish 14-15 inches to keep. Then on our last day we fished much shallower and had more success. We caught quite a few 16-18 inch walleye in 12-14 feet and 6-8 feet. Our best fishing was with spinners. Both crawlers and leeches worked about equally well.

Thanks to everyone who provided some info!

We had a great time last week, stayed at Woodland from Aug 8-15th and trailered around to various landings each day playing the wind. Did I mention wind? Plenty of wind had us backtrolling with the big motor, forward trolling with the kicker while steering with the bowmount, and then feeling lazy when we could actually just use the electric by itself.

We found fish consistently in ~20′ of water, occasionally as shallow as 12-14′ when the wind was blowing. We averaged a “hard” 6 hours per day typically from 10am-4pm, boating just over 50 walleyes per day, with the largest at 17″, norm about 12-13″, and plenty of 15″ers for a couple meals and a full limit each to take home. Water was quite green at the surface, and the north shorelines had a big blue-green bloom and smelled wonderful.

As a boat of misplaced muskie fishermen, we just stuck with what was working for steady action, pulling crawlers on spinner rigs, and did not do any jigging in deep water which everyone said you needed to do to target bigger fish – we just didn’t have good ideas on where to start for trying that. Our best results on calm(er) days was running about 0.8 – 1.2mph with #3 blades in chartreuse and green on a crawler harness, a small prop blade with a Slow Death hook, or even a Slow Death hook with just beads but no blade. When the wind was up with clear skies we had success with as larger blades up to a #5 and a color switch to blues and purples; overcast skies created a very strong preference for gold and black rigs.

I tried one of these “Bait Up” containers and really loved it. Put a dozen crawlers in it at a time and kept them in the livewell. No worm dirt in the boat!
https://www.scheels.com/p/bait-up-personal-carry-live-bait-container/850094-6262.html#q=bait%2Bup&lang=en_US&start=2

It was also great to meet and share a beer with Brewer on Friday night as we were packing and they were coming in! Hope your trip went well.

A couple pics.

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Thanks for the thorough report, we are heading up tomorrow morning for 3.5 days of fishing.

Was there the first week of August for the first time ever. About as easy limits as you can get south of the border. Caught a 25″er the first evening, otherwise the rest were 12-13.5″ with a very select few 15-18″. Fished out of East Bay. Had our 10 for the day in the first hour more mornings than not. If you’re staying anywhere around East Bay PM and I’d be glad to help.

tbro16 wrote:

Was there the first week of August for the first time ever. About as easy limits as you can get south of the border. Caught a 25″er the first evening, otherwise the rest were 12-13.5″ with a very select few 15-18″. Fished out of East Bay. Had our 10 for the day in the first hour more mornings than not. If you’re staying anywhere around East Bay PM and I’d be glad to help.

Thanks, we are staying at Lakeview Lodge so I’m guessing we will start in 6 mile. But there are some specific structures in other parts of the lake that we want to check out.

This is normally our Canadian fishing trip so it’s a first time for us as well. Just a matter of figuring out what they want each day!

Yep, unfortunate but as long as you dont mind catching little ones you’ll still have a great time. Nobody from my whole group had ever been there but it didnt take us long to find fish. Main lake structure or current! Our best depths came 20-24 ft mid-day. Big one randomly came on a shoreline break in 12-15 ft along some wood

Ryan Speers wrote:

Thanks, we are staying at Lakeview Lodge so I’m guessing we will start in 6 mile.

We fished 6 Mile the last day trying to get relief from the 25mph NW wind. We launched, dropped the trolling motor and started working north towards the bridge. There’s a subtle hard-bottom point about half way there that had fish all over it. The side-imaging really helped find those bottom transition areas!

It’s crazy how well those transitions light up on si. Just start laying down waypoints.

All you guys make it sound as though there are no skunks on DL. We, 6 of us, have been going to Algoma, WI and fishing Lake Michigan once a year for salmon. Very fun but a very long way to drive. How far is DL from Duluth, anyone know. It sounds like it can be good walleye fishing and that’s all we fish for around here. Also, how’s thee facilities for spending a week> Enough motels and what are prices like? thanks for any info.

I got out there just as Michael C. Winther was getting ready to head home. It was great to grab a beer and catch up! We had a similar experience. Lots of fish, just small. The old shorelines (17-20 feet of water) were good. We caught fish anywhere from 10-22 feet, with most coming in 17-22. We had two days with no clouds and no wind. The fishing slowed down a lot by late morning those days. So we came in for the afternoon, then headed back out for the evening and the fish seemed to be biting again. Gold, green, pink, and orange were our best colors.

Michael C. Winther wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Ryan Speers wrote:</div>
Thanks, we are staying at Lakeview Lodge so I’m guessing we will start in 6 mile.

We fished 6 Mile the last day trying to get relief from the 25mph NW wind. We launched, dropped the trolling motor and started working north towards the bridge. There’s a subtle hard-bottom point about half way there that had fish all over it. The side-imaging really helped find those bottom transition areas!

Side imaging happens to be just about all I use other than the map. We got out here today and there was only a little wind when we launched at 330 so we made the run over to the golden highway.

It’s not my boat so I let the owner run it the first pass, after that he let me dial in his graph and we immediately spotted fish holding tight to the rocks on side imaging. We spent two hours working up and down the highway and ended up catching 17. Kept 7 to eat. Not furiously fast fishing but I’ve had worse days! None of us have ever fished a slow death hook before today, all 17 fish came on various rigs with slow death hooks and we tried normal rigs and got zero bites on those.

Three more full days of fishing and the weather looks great! We plan to use the morning getting familiar with another area of the lake.

Joe Roberts wrote:

All you guys make it sound as though there are no skunks on DL. We, 6 of us, have been going to Algoma, WI and fishing Lake Michigan once a year for salmon. Very fun but a very long way to drive. How far is DL from Duluth, anyone know. It sounds like it can be good <em class=”ido-tag-em”>walleye fishing and that’s all we fish for around here. Also, how’s thee facilities for spending a week> Enough motels and what are prices like? thanks for any info.

6 hour drive from Duluth to Devil’s Lake, nice and easy, straight across Hwy 2.
We stayed a week in a cabin at Woodland Resort, was very spacious and comfortable. 2 bedrooms, each with a full-size bed and a bunkbed so could easily sleep 6 if needed. Full kitchen with dishwasher, laundry washer/dryer, and bathroom had a walk-in tile shower. Propane grill outside, free use of fish fryer a short walk away at the lodge. Huge deck plus a firepit. Fish cleaning house is spotless. Whole place was clean and very nice, highly recommended.

We also stayed at Woodland Resort. It’s a great place. We stayed at the suites, which is a relatively new building. The rooms were great with a nice balcony overlooking the lake.

Joe Roberts wrote:

All you guys make it sound as though there are no skunks on DL. We, 6 of us, have been going to Algoma, WI and fishing Lake Michigan once a year for salmon. Very fun but a very long way to drive. How far is DL from Duluth, anyone know. It sounds like it can be good <em class=”ido-tag-em”>walleye fishing and that’s all we fish for around here. Also, how’s thee facilities for spending a week> Enough motels and what are prices like? thanks for any info.

Lake View Lodge is another great option, John and Maria are great hosts. We fished out there last week Thursday and Friday. 3 of us boated 83 eyes total for a day and a half of fishing. As others have stated lots of 12.5″-14″ fish. We also caught quite a few in the 15″-18″ range. Trolled salmo hornets and flicker shads on weed line edges and on tops of gravel roads.