Three friends and I returned Sunday from a 2-day trip to Lake of the Woods. We stayed at Sportsman’s Lodge. This was my first time ice fishing LOTW as it was for one other guy in the group. The accommodations were about as I expected. We stayed in one of the smaller cabins and although they are far from fancy and could use updating…they served their purpose. The fish cleaning is a great addition as we literally handed them our buckets and received filleted fish packaged for travel within a couple hours. The night life in the bar/restaurant was entertaining with good food and cold drinks. We did not stick around until the real late hours as at about 11:00 each night it seemed some of the visitors were not exactly “happy” drunks.
After checking in Thursday night, we headed to the watering hole to talk about the bite with others who had already been out. The general consensus was that it was “slow” by LOTW early ice standards, but fish were still being caught with relative ease. We heard anything from houses catching 30-60 fish a day in the past week. We had a day shack both Friday and Saturday with decent, not great, results as many also had. I personally landed 22 fish (50-50 split of saugers & eyes) on Friday over 22′ of water and then 32 fish on Saturday in 20′. At least half of the fish caught were 10-13″ to be released. 2 of my friends are not real serious about fishing and spent time glancing at phones and BS’ing during the slow part of midday and hampered their personal numbers considerably. With more serious efforts, our house could have probably averaged ~70 fish a day. Our biggest fish was only 18″, and we didn’t lose any fish that we felt were any bigger over those two days. In talking with other houses, we found similar results regarding size. 1/8oz buckshots in orange or red and glow colored frostee jigs on dead sticks proved to be the most effective and efficient way to land fish.
We will be back again next year around the same time.
