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1st open water trip to URL this weekend


BigDogRob

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Is there anything that I should think of before I head up that I might forget? We'll have the basics, just thinking if there has beenanything that has made any of your trips easier/better?

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A prayer for good weather and a safe trip, and oh ya a big enough cooler to bring home your good catch. smile. Hope you have a great time, post ur results when you get back

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Yeah, have a cooler designated for our hopefully good catch! Forecast says 50% cloudy day 72 degrees and a south wind about 7mph... Sounds like if it holds true it will be a perfect trip... I guess just getting to spend time fishing/with family is well worth going up! Thanks Bill,

I will report how I do...Maybe even try to update a couple live results while up there depending on the reception with the phone.

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Bigdogob, hope your pounding some fish and keeping the rain gear close by. Looks better for the next few days.

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Well, we were up and ready to go at 4am Saturday and got on the lake about 8:00in the morning. After grabbing throttle we headed east out of Mort's Dock... tried trolling with some spinners as far as Roger's, and never seen a fish. Continued east tried trolling and had a couple hits, but still no fish...we then decided to reel in and shoot to the SE corner and try our luck. There were already 3 or 4 boats there, so we gave a bit of distance to try and be nice and not crowd anyone... we switched back and forth between shiners and leeches and jigs and spinners and a couple cranks...I know we caught fish trying each set-up, but it wasn't fast or furious. We never caught anything other than walleyes even though some others said they had. We did go home with 2 limits of walleyes and we threw back fish... I think the biggest we caught was 19.75" it got kind of hectic when we anchored up for lunch as I caught 3 fish while trying to eat a sandwich... we caught fish anchored and trolling all while the other 30+ boats were catching fish also around us... It was another fun trip up to URL. We did have a few break-offs that I wish we could of got a glimpse of! We caught our fish in 5'-9' of water. In a couple hrs we will be eating some of the beauties we caught yesterday. The weather was great for us up there, glad the rain and wind were cooperative with us...it was definitely different than the -15 with 40mph wind when up over the winter.

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Sounds like the fish gods were on your side. Glad to hear you had a good time, now time to start planning for the return trip. Thanks for the post

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Oh we are definitely going back! Have some things to finish up on the boat first. It may not be until August or September since we are going to be heading to Canada in July for about a week. We will then take the campers up, and make it a little mini-vacation. The fish gods were definitely on our side, and more on mine than my fishing partner, but we both managed to catch fish so it turned out good. Bill, you planning on heading up there?

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Bigdogrob: we have a cabin in east central Minnesota that we are are at 26-27 weekends a year so we spend our time there.being retired we are pretty flexible as to how long we stay on each trip so I don't get north anymore for open water. We make several trips in the winter though through Waskish Minnow station. It's always fun to read reports like yours though where fish were caught and fun was had by all. That's the one good thing about getting older, the memory inventory builds up pretty good grin hope you have a great trip to Canada

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  • Your Responses - Share & Have Fun :)

    • leech~~
      Nope not me.  May want to go nextdoor and ask around?  
    • smurfy
      Looks to me like Leech brought his chair home!!😅😆
    • Brianf.
      I'm not there, so I can't tell exactly what's going on but it looks like a large area of open water developed in the last day with all of the heavy snow on the east side of wake em up Narrows. These two photos are from my Ring Camera facing north towards Niles Point.  You can see what happened with all of snow that fell in the last three days, though the open water could have been wind driven. Hard to say. .  
    • SkunkedAgain
      Black Bay had great ice before but a few spots near rockpiles where there were spots of open water. It looks like the weight of the snow has created a little lake in the middle of the bay.  
    • LakeofthewoodsMN
      On the south end...   Thanks to some cold spring weather, ice fishing continues strong for those still ice fishing.  The bite remains very good.  Most resorts have pulled their fish houses off for the year, however, some still have fish houses out and others are allowing ATV and side by sides.  Check social media or call ahead to your favorite resort for specifics. Reports this week for walleyes and saugers remain excellent.   A nice mix of jumbo perch, pike, eelpout, and an occasional crappie, tullibee or sturgeon being reported by anglers. Jigging one line and using a live minnow on the second line is the way to go.  Green, glow red, pink and gold were good colors this week.     Monster pike are on a tear!  Good number of pike, some reaching over 45 inches long, being caught using tip ups with live suckers or dead bait such as smelt and herring in 8 - 14' of water.   As always, work through a resort or outfitter for ice road conditions.  Safety first always. Fish houses are allowed on the ice through March 31st, the walleye / sauger season goes through April 14th and the pike season never ends. On the Rainy River...  The river is opened up along the Nelson Park boat ramp in Birchdale, the Frontier boat ramp and Vidas boat ramp.  This past week, much of the open water skimmed over with the single digit overnight temps.   Areas of the river have popped open again and with temps getting warmer, things are shaping up for the last stretch through the rest of the spring season, which continues through April 14th.   Very good numbers of walleyes are in the river.  Reports this week, even with fewer anglers, have been good.  When temps warm up and the sun shines, things will fire up again.   Jigs with brightly colored plastics or jigs with a frozen emerald shiner have been the desired bait on the river.  Don't overlook slow trolling crankbaits upstream as well.   Good reports of sturgeon being caught on the river as well.  Sturgeon put the feed bag on in the spring.  The bite has been very good.  Most are using a sturgeon rig with a circle hook loaded with crawlers or crawlers / frozen emerald shiners. Up at the NW Angle...  Ice fishing is winding down up at the Angle.  Walleyes, saugers, and a number of various species in the mix again this week.  The bite is still very good with good numbers of fish.  The one two punch of jigging one line and deadsticking the second line is working well.   Check with Angle resorts on transport options from Young's Bay.  Call ahead for ice road guidelines.  
    • CigarGuy
      With the drifting, kind of hard to tell for sure, but I'm guessing about a foot and still lightly snowing. Cook end!
    • PSU
      How much snow did you get on Vermilion? 
    • Mike89
      lake here refroze too...  started opening again yesterday with the wet snow and wind...  very little ice left today...
    • Hookmaster
      A friend who has a cabin between Alex and Fergus said the lake he's on refroze. He texted me a pic from March 12th when it was open and one from 23rd when it wasn't. 🤯
    • SkunkedAgain
      I don't think that there has been any ice melt in the past few weeks on Vermilion. Things looked like a record and then Mother Nature swept in again.   I'll give my revised guess of April 21st
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