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Zipple reports?


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We were up there last Friday. We did OK...no great shakes but we did catch fish. We did the best in 22 FOT, we went out later and tried the 30 FOT and did catch a few, but most were small. Best lure for me was a 1/8 ounce green glow demon with a shiner head jigged slowly.

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We were up at Zipple yesterday. Like upnorth said fishing was OK. Got 17 keeper walleye and sauger mix for 3 guys. Nothing big just decent fish between 14-17 inches. Got some smaller too. Saw fish on the flashers quite often but would only bite every so often. We were in 27 feet of water. Red glow and green glow worked best for us. An eighth ounce red glow rattlin varmit worked best for me personally, got most of my fish jigging. I would have to coax the fish to bite quite often, I would jig it a couple feet off the bottom and they would follow it up, go back down to the bottom and come up again and then finally hit. Not the best fishing I have had up there but not the worst either. Good luck.

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Fished Friday and Saturday out of Zipple Bay with the

South Dakota crew. They drove all night Thursday and

toughed it out in the portables all day Friday bleary

eyed but focused.

Looking for a quiet area we went a half mile further

west than the last house, split up and fished 22 and

28 feet deep water. The 28 foot produced dink Saugers

and not much else(at 2:30 pm we had 4 fish in the bucket).

The house set up in 22 feet picked away at Walleyes and

Saugers all day and were almost done by 3pm.

Then the real fun began. We picked up and moved shallow!

This is a good idea anywhere but especially at Zipple and

along Pine.

The Lake Master chip said 12 feet but there is more water

in the lake now so it was 15 feet deep. Spoons back in

the water at 3:20 and at 4pm 8 big fat Walleyes in the

bucket and big smiles all around. We drilled 2 holes

and shared the Vexilar.

It was odd but I have done it before. I took the dead

minnows out of the bucket and squished em and tossed em

down the hole. You could see them slowly sink to the

bottom and within a few seconds fish would appear. We

kept the spoons half way to the surface until we saw

the fish on the flasher they would drop down and go to

work. If only one fish was there it would follow the

spoons up and down and not bite but as soon as one or

two others showed up it was chase and smash.

Saturday our group was twice as big and the results were

the same. Some did fair during the day and were done

by the time the shallow bite started. For those that still

needed fish, it was over in hurry once the holes were

drilled in 15 feet..

This was my second trip out this winter. The same tactics

yielded the same results. I have fished shallow at the

end of the day before with not as stellar results. But,

when it works it is fast and furious.

Cant wait to go again...

Nick and his crews worked a good deal

of the night Thursday repairing cracks

and getting ready for Fridays deluge.

AND they sat right on the trouble spots

to make sure everyone got across ok.

They work real hard for 8 bucks a truck.

Thanks Nick and Deanna

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Curt-

I have used the squishing technique, buddies used to just laugh, but they don't anymore if you know what I mean. At times it creates a frenzy down there. A "fish storm" as one of my buddies calls it.

Our crew arrived at Zippel at noon on the 26th, fished east of the road in 25 FOW, marked fish all afternoon but they just didn't seem very aggressive, could bring them up a couple feet off the bottom, but they'd just look and end up cruisin back down. Threw every jigging spoon in the box at them all colors of Angel Eyes and Rattlin Varmints. We ended up with 13 keepers for our crew for the afternoon.

Thursday we decided to cover some different water and headed over Pine. Got set up in 29 FOW, dropped the green demon down and the bobber just kept sinking, "what the hell", took 2 seconds and I had a chunky 17 incher in the pail. Gold mine I thought. Marked fish for the next hour or so, changed jigging spoons again every 5 minutes without luck. So there I sit, fish under me but not biting, I look in the box and think, NO I CAN'T. Ok, I'll try this thing, but I've never had ANY success with it. On went the perch colored Chubby Darter. An hour later, and 20 walleyes later, I still couldn't believe it. They absolutely HAMMERED that thing, often chasing it up to 6 feet off the bottom to smack it, the faster I pulled it away from them, the faster they climbed to pound it. So one of my buddies walks over, I tell him how crazy the bite is(it's slow in their house), and I give him my only other Darter in the box. 3 minutes later he walks back to my door with a fat, tail-pinched 19 incher in hand. The smile on his face was priceless. We ended up catching a few more in the afternoon, but things had slowed down considerably. We had a nice mix of chunky 17 inchers so we were pretty happy.

Friday we went back to the same holes over Pine, landed a couple a piece for the crew, with a 23" being the biggest. Hammered gold angel eyes seem to produce the best.

Saturday morning we headed out back in Zippel for a couple hours before heading home. Caught 1 18" and nothing else. Packed up and headed off. Fishing was pretty good all in all, I still can't believe that hour with the Darter, but sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time.

Great trip and can't wait for next year with the crew.

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Great report!

Did you try moving shallower towards sundown?

Have you guys ever tried using small smelt? My B-I-L got a 10 pound box of smelt the other day....and they look to be the same size as the shiners we use on LOTW. I would think they'd work awesome with the head pinched off. We will see!

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No, we didn't move shallower for the evening bite. It seemed about 2/3 of our fish came on the jigging spoons. Keep flashing it. I always have a large supply of angel eyes and rattlin varmints with me. Fatheads seemed to produce better than the shiners on the dead stick.

I know some swear by the shiners, but we just haven't seen it.

Anyone else have an opinion on that?? Shiners vs. fatheads.

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One day (or hour) it's shiners and the next fatheads. Next time it doesn't matter which. One hole is shiner and the next fathead. Thats why I hardly ever hit the ice without both and some rosies thrown in for good measure if I can get them.

Don't stop a few bucks short of a good fishing trip!

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Fishing was slow today for the first time in my hard house. My wife and I had one fish by noon. It was hard for me to know what to do. This spot has been great 20 21 fow. But we were getting flooded out anyway, so we pulled er out and headed west. Now this cold front was coming in and my urge was to go deep. So I went swallower. 17 fow. Set up the house and went to town to get food. At 3:00pm we were fishing again. 3:30 came and so did the walleye. At 4:30 we were full and the bite slowed, by 5:00 they were done. You get time enough to fish with one rod in this time. Oh yes, chubs did the job. Should be good here in the am as well. Happy New Year everyone.......

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thanks for all the great reports. i can't wait to get up there. i'll post our results when we get back.

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I always chum, I've done quite well when I've matched the fall rate with just a minnow body an a very small hook, takes awhile to get to bottom but its a far more natural presentation. chuming really works. Boar

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My brother in law actually got about 10 lbs of smelt that the zoo feeds to their penguins...about the same size as the shiners that are sold on LOTW. Needless to say we'll have some chum and bait for quite a while! lol

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Quote:

My brother in law actually got about 10 lbs of smelt that the zoo feeds to their penguins...about the same size as the shiners that are sold on LOTW. Needless to say we'll have some chum and bait for quite a while! lol


I see your from Texas, you can chum there but not here, sorry just a heads up!

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Hey Dougger, I am glad you mentioned chumming the way you did.

I have been looking thru the rule book and cant find any

mention of chumming one way or the other. It does say

you cant dump entrails in the water but it also says you

cant dump fish on shore. They are not talking about

minnows there. I am not saying its not there but that I

cant find anything.

I am not talking chumm grider, but putting the pinched off

bodys and stepped on minnows down the hole. I can call the

local CO tomorrow and find out what he says but if you have

some solid info. Post it here and keep us out of trouble.

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i was up there dec 30 got home today.i moved my house in the shallows 14ft it was kinda slow few here and there.so i tried my buddys house out in 18 ft and wow what a bigg diff.we filled out on both saugers and walleyes in 18ft plus we caught a few in shallow but that 18 seems tobe the place.so when i get my camper doneits going in 18ft for sure.jigging and the dead stick worked very well.but jigging caught the bigger 1's tho.cant wait to get back up there.

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fished out of zipple in a sleeper wed, thur, and fri morning. very slow in the sleeper as we only caught about 10 fish total for 5 people. 2 eyes and the rest perch in about 21 feet. we moved in to about 18 on wed with the portables and caught a dozen eyes in which we kept eight. it was pretty slow in my opinion, but we had a good time regardless. the fish that we did catch didn't really prefer any one presentation over another. we did mark quite a few lookers on the marcom and vex. just couldn't get some of them to commit. fun to be out though.

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Fished out of Zipple Wednesday and Thursday. Jan 2 in 27feet caught 5 eyes and 2 sauger from 1:00pm to 5:00pm. next day was windy, so we asked Nick if he had house open. Got 2 houses. 1 in 22 feet which was house 45. They got 5 eyes there.Bit mostly from 8:00 am till 9:30 am. House 46 was in 19 feet and from 8:00 am until 1:30pm we caught 19 eyes and 3 sauger. Thanks nick for the house from Cabin 3.

P.S. bobble fish. jigging chased them off.

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Grasshopper, we were in shack 80 the same two days you were there. The road west of jackfish, serb I think, we were in 17 fow, we ended up with 24 walleyes and only 1 sauger. But all the fish were nice 14 to 18.5 inches. 8am till 11am was the best, caught a few just before dark. Gold Buck Shot rattle spoons took most of the fish. Had to keep it moving all the time though, very few bites on the dead stick. Great resort and great roads.

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Rented two 4-person sleepers out of Zippel Bay Resort last weekend (Jan. 4-6). We stayed 3 nights. Caught a lot of small ones, but we caught plenty of keepers too. Only 2 walleyes were too big to throw back, one was 20 inches on the nose, and the other a nice 27 3/4-inch walleye. Didn't catch as many saugers as we were expecting from reports (this was our first time on LOW), but we caught some nice bonus perch (about 10), with the largest being about 14 inches. In all, we caught about 150 walleyes combined for the 2 houses (again, a lot of throwback dinkies ranging anywhere from about 6-11 inches). We did good both jigging and deadsticking. Gold and pink/glow lures worked wonderfully, but the biggest fish (including the 2 slot fish) came of plain hooks (the 27 3/4-inch fish on a bleeding hook at about 10:15 p.m. on a rattle wheel while we were trying to relax). Great roads, good ice, had a blast!! Good luck to all!

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Big Otis sounds like a great trip you guys had, did you catch alot of fish after dark. We were in a day house all the time and left about a hour after dark, because the fish seemed to stop biting.

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The best times for us were from about 7:45 a.m.-9 a.m. and from 2 p.m.-3 p.m. But yes, we did stay up a little later than usual on Friday & Saturday night having a good time and we caught fish on the glow pink (not fast'n furious, but steady enough to keep us entertained). I was the only one actually jigging and managed to catch some decent 17-18 inchers with the jigging spoon I was using (pink/glow JB Lures spoon with a treble hook which I found at Cabela's). During the day, I used the same exact lure, but in gold. They both worked really well. We all pretty much used gold during daylight hours, and glow in the dark pink and plain hooks at night. Like I said, our biggest fish came on the plain hooks on the rattle wheels with fatheads. But the shiners worked real well too. The fish really didn't seem to have a preference for either where we were at. We must have just been in the right spot, because the resort guys said they had been hearing mixed reports from their other houses when they stopped in to check. Like I mentioned, we were on the outside edge of all of the other houses, which may have had something to do with it. Good luck!!

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how deep of water ???we were fishing at 22 ft and did alright but we had to work for them,the bite was very slow.

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a couple of us were up there 2 years ago and we caught around 8 eyes at night but we were in shallow water in a sleeper shanty. i wouldnt do again because during the day sucked for fishing. one day the resort put us in a day sleeper because we wernt having any luck and during that day we caught more fish then we did in the sleeper shack all weekend.

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yes fishing in the shallows sucks during the day.i only fish i nthe shallows from 6:30 am to 10 am then back in the shallows at 2:30 pm till hour after dark

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Big Walleye Guy,

We were in 22 feet the whole time. We did catch some fish at night, but it was nothing like during the day. I would say of all the fish we caught, about 30 percent came from 6 p.m.-3 a.m. (we were woken up a couple of times during the night by the rattle wheels, all of which were always rigged up with plain hooks and fatheads). But the only house that had any luck at night was ours. Our other four buddies about 70 yards away in the other sleeper (also in 22 feet)never caught a thing after 6 p.m. Our house also caught about 70 percent of the fish total, so we had way better action. And our house was on the very outside edge of all the other fish houses on jackfish. If it wasn't on the plain hooks, it came on pink/glow lures. Hope this helps. Good luck if your heading out there. We're already planning our next trip!!!

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Big Otis Thanks for responding. I knew a person could catch a walleye on that lake at night! Ive been up to zippel twice this year now with my wheel house. on sauger rd. And the only thing I could get after dark was pout. I ended up just pulling up the lines. Also everyone you talk to says you cant catch a walleye at night on LOW. We were in 24 fow maybe that had something to do with it. Oh well next trip im trying a plain hook and will keep a line down and fight thru the pout i guess.

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It is very unusual to hear about a night walleye bite on LOW. Could it be that the water is by far the clearest that I have seen it in over 30 years?

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  • Your Responses - Share & Have Fun :)

    • Brianf.
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