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Fished Big Pine for the first time this holiday season.  Caught a few pike and two small walleyes.  I'm not looking for spots but I've never fished a lake that is pure sand with no weeds.  I fished a first break one day and from 12-25 fow I didn't find any structure and I drilled a ton of holes.  Tried a sharp break the following day and same results but no fish.  Do you just have to set up and the fish roam around?  Do you have to hit mid lake structures?  Both of the spots I tried were shoreline breaks.  Heck we caught more shiners then walleyes this weekend!  Ice was 8" in both spots I fished.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated

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Haven't been out there myself but my son and his buddies have a bunch. "you can punch a hole anywhere right now and catch walleyes" is the report. Maybe try again.

 

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Get used to it cause you get a lot of people that look but no one reply. Try some of the humps that are away from the shorelines or corners in a shoreline break my best luck has always been in the afternoon to after dark good luck.

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Thanks.  We tried north shorline didn't do too bad a lot of misses but pretty slow.  Do you guys find dead sticks work better then jigging?  All of our activity was on jigs not one hit on a dead stick.

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Last year the shoreline break 12-14 FOW nothing but low lying sand grass jigging a small crankbait tipped with minnow head. They would come in and crush the bait like a tackle thieving slimer, watched it on camera.

 

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Did you actually see weeds on camera?  We were finding weeds here and there but nothing more than 2-3 here and there.

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Very sparse, not enough to really amount to much cover. Lots of perch in the areas we did well on walleye, assume that's why they were there.

 

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When we were fishing the north break we actually were catching shiners 3-6" guys so figured the walleyes wouldn't be too far away.

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Was just wondering how the ice conditions are on thw lake? How many inches? Driving out? Any bad spots?  Thanks for any replies. 

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I haven't been back since New Years but they were parking on the ice at that time and pulling wheel houses out so I'm sure most places you can drive but obviously don't be the first explorer in an area without checking ice thickness.

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33 minutes ago, Chill62 said:

 I'm sure most places you can drive but obviously don't be the first explorer in an area without checking ice thickness.

This is a Great reminder ,  Too many people just assume that with the 2 cold snaps that the ice must be thick enough by now. Check the ice thickness for yourself and keep yourself out of harms way. :2c:

Mike

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A friend of mine was on Big Floyd by DL and had 12.5" of ice and he wanted to try Little Floyd so he jumped over got out a bit and decided he should check the ice thickness.  Drilled a hole and had 9.5".  He was in the process of packing up to get the heck off the ice and a full size vehicle pulling a double axle drop down fish house flew by him as he was trying to wave them down.  Please take time and checked.  I checked my favorite hole Friday because friends were saying 7.5-8" and I was out two weeks earlier and had that amount at that time.  I drilled and found 10.5" and flooding right next to shore where a portable had been fishing.  Got 50 feet away and had 12".  I played chineese fire drill all the way to my destination to make sure.  Did it suck?  YES!  BUT I know I have safe ice the whole way across the lake!!!  Lake of the Woods they are still finding 6" spots on the lake!

Best advice I can give a person is buy a scoop that has the inches marked on the scoop.  That way you know exactly how thick the ice is instead of estimating it.

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Son was out there this past weekend and said people were driving everywhere. Obviously you want to avoid the inlet outlet areas.

 

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Thank you everyone for the replies. I am always a safety first kind of guy. Was just wondering what to expect when i head that way. Thanks again. I'll let you know what i find. 

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On 1/18/2016 at 5:52 PM, CASTnBLAST said:

Son was out there this past weekend and said people were driving everywhere. Obviously you want to avoid the inlet outlet areas.

 

Thanks for the update!  I'll be out there on Sunday I guess helping setting a fish house up.  Neither of us have set this house up so I'm hoping to make it back to Fargo by noon! lol

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Was out on Big Pine early (thursday)...many shelters and spearing houses occupied for a week day... there is a big push to take pike big and small on Big Pine as the pike populations are extremely high. saw many spearing houses by 9 am that had at least 1-2 pike and a few anglers with at least 1 pike... one angler was on a crappie run at 18 feet    

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I will also be out here this weekend, chasing some walleyes. We usually have pretty good luck. Thanks for all the updates.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Anyone know what the North Access is looking like?  Gotta get a fish house off of the lake and curious what I'm getting into on Saturday

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I was out there Satruday morning.  North access was car friendly still.  While out on the ice there were spots were 3-4" of water were sitting.  We were able to get our fish house off of the lake easy but there was a giant lake around it 3-4" deep.  When I did pull the house away from where she was sitting I had a tire on the trailer drive across the frozen hole last used on Monday and it broke open.  The water was flowing down the hole like crazy.  North side only had a few fish houses but the crappie hole to the east had a few houses still.  Ice looked good for all things considered.

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  • 3 months later...

They are getting harder to find by the day.  Water warmed up fast this year and I think the shiner bite is about over.  I fished with crawlers and leeches last weekend and had good luck.

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I was using shiners and the shiners went deep but I didn't try and leeches or crawlers, I did see a guy up shallow speed trolling with crawlers killing them.  In the 45 min we tried to stay near them they picked up about 8 keepers and threw back a few slot fish.  Jig and shiner seemed to be too aggressive but a lindy did good.

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