Jon-P?

[alex1]

Jon i was jsut wondering when you would suggest making a trip to UR. i want to bring my dad and son up for a guys get away and try to snag into some slabs and walleyes. maybe a huge Pike to boot. I was jsut wondering what time of the winter months you would suggest. Another question I have is about the full moon. I've heard that the 3 days before and after the full are the best. Do you find theis to be the case during hard water months? Thanks for your response

[Random guy]

Well it is hard to hit a time when all three will be at a peak during their respected seasons. So lets break all three down and you can pick when you would like to try.

For pike you are going to see two major peaks in feeding during their winter season. The first one is early ice, normaly this time of the year it is foot travel only, maybe a wheeler or sled if you have already walked a safe path out that day. When the ice first covers Upper Red the pike go bonkers, they attack everything they come across, spoons, jigs, minnows, small dogs and even hands if you are brave enough to try it.

Then we will see a peak in pike activity around the first part of Feb into the end of pike season. My guess is they are slowly putting on the feed bags for presawn feeding. So for targeting pike look to first ice and early Feb.

Now the walleye are a little different, they peak hard in Jan, normaly about mid month they will drive guys with rattle wheels bonkers all night. Walleye action will be steady all winter but mid Jan definetly shows to be the peak of activity.

Crappies, these goofy nomads normaly start of a little slow in December and just keep getting better and better as the winter turns to spring. By late Jan early Feb you are starting to see some good action but by March they are on a rampage. This my favorite time to fish for crappies. The weather is nice, normaly the snow is melting off the ice and the crappies are ticked. Come March it often takes longer to drive out then to catch a limit of nice crappies and nobody is around, its great!

If I was to plan a trip for all three I would look at late Jan through mid Feb during the week. Once the weekend traffic and noise is gone off the lake fishing picks up, most locals do not fish to hard during the weekends due to this.

As for the full moon we can't figue it out other then when Red has heavy snow cover during a full moon fish bite during the mid day and when the ice is clear and snow free the full moon shuts them off at night hardcore...of course once I said that they will do the oppisite. They are still fish and very unpredicable.

ow all this can change due tom ice thickness, snow cover, heavy winds and even the temps. Best bet is to just come up every weekend, you'll hit em.