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2018-2019 Ice Fishing Reports


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Travel on lakes is very difficult.  We are getting around on some lakes but only in 4 wheel low.  It's been tough.  There are a few lakes and I keep hearing guys going to Lida especially since the bass are active the past few weeks.  Big lakes like Lida should have a plowed road and you can try to go from there.  I'd suggest doing a recon trip on the ice without a trailer prior to bringing the house onto the lake.  I was on Big Pine on Sunday and there were a lot of guys getting stuck exploring the lake while pulling their house with them.

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

4 minutes ago, Prody said:

Wondering if anyone has got out and found any tullibees yet or tried for them?

 

I’ve wanted to try a lake I’ve done well for tullibee in the past. But with all this snow and even though I have a good sled I’m not going to try, the slush is really bad on almost every lake now. And looking at the extended forecast it’s not going to get any better soon.

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Sorry I haven't posted in a while we went chasing tulibees on Saturday morning.  Buddy "Scouted" the lake ahead of time and was able to get near to where we wanted to fish so we went out at sunrise...  Both of us got stuck in the process but found a place to wedge our vehicles into the snow bank to allow vehicles to drive by us on the "Road" that was plowed.  Fish were down there and a few were chasing hard core.  After switching gear and presentations up around 10 I landed 4 in a matter of minutes and then it was time for us to get going.  I caught 4, 1 dink and 3 medium sized ones.  My buddy caught 3 all were mediums.  Snow was stupid thick on the lake we were on and we had flooding the moment we drilled the first hole.  I'd love to get back out again but sadly unless there is an actual road or someone has tracks I'm out of commission till then.  Fish bit on a larger spoon with a 4 mm jig.  I tried my old reliable using a smaller spoon and only had lookers.  We should have stayed longer but we went home for a nap.  If anyone is looking for some videos for tulibee fishing a buddy of mine Scott Mackner has produced a few great videos for tulibee fishing and "Icing Massive Tulibees 2017" is a great video from one of our better days we had 2 years ago.  He also takes a little time prior to getting going in the video showing our secret technique for how we rig up our rods.  We had no snow so it made it very different than our current season.

 

We hit a second lake up for the evening for crappies because of the tournament the girlfriend was in.  The lake had been an evening bite usually 5/6 till 9:30/10 so we got out there around 5 and there was a huge group that walked out from their cabin fishing and they were landing fish like crazy.  Bite wasn't too great but landed a few nice crappies to add to her final measurement total. Currently the girlfriend is in 4th place in the Ice Queen Crappie tournament which I think is very respectable since 1st place is from Iowa, 2nd place is from Vermont, and we aren't 100% sure where 3rd place is from but for 4th place to be caught 100% in Becker/Ottertail Counties says something about he resources that we have around us.

 

This weekend I'm going to try and get our perm house off of the lake since nothing went right Sunday before the storm hit to get it off then.  I'm hoping I'm not spending 4 hours trying to plow a path out to the house because I'm about 2 miles from the access and both buddies who have plow trucks are on or will be on a beach somewhere instead of a frozen lake...can't blame them!!

 

Watch out for slush pockets...looked like some people on a lake were purposely drilling holes on a main road to stop people from driving down them causing the road to flood.  It's going to be a long few weekends if we don't get warm temps and this snow melts/settles.

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@Chill62 where do you start looking for tullibee? I know of a few spots on a lake but it would be about a 7 mile snowmobile ride which is fine but I’d rather it be a little shorter. I thought deep flats (40-60fow) and just drill around until you come across a school or fish? The lake isn’t loaded with them but there is a few.

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Tulibee is a weird fish you can catch them in 100 feet of water and you can catch them in 7 feet.  Depending on the lake I try to start finding deeper holes and start there.  Everyone is used to walleye and how they hug the bottom, tulibee you gotta imagine flying a plane because they are 99% of the time suspended and it reminds me of deer hunting trying to find "pinch points" on a lake.  I love islands near deep water especially if there are two and I'll fish the area between them in the deeper water.  Some guys hop around a lot and yes that can sometimes help but sometimes I've had best luck by staying put in the same spot and letting them come to me.  When I look at deep holes I like to hop around till I sorta find them then stay put, seems if you catch one you'll catch more.  Tulibees do swim around a ton so it's not like walleye or crappie fishing where 10 feet left or right makes a huge difference.  It does help if you and your buddies spread out some instead of being right on top of each other!  I rarely use my 2 man house for them unless I'm less than 45 feet because then you start catching your buddies line while fishing that deep.  On my narrow cone angle in 75 feet I believe I'm still capturing 15-20 feet of bottom so you tend to catch other peoples lines in your graph if fishing too close together.  If you have friends with and spreading out 30-50 feet apart I have had best luck because it seems to bring in schools then if you are talking between each other it can help with trying to find out where in the water column they are coming through at so everyone can adjust presentations accordingly.  If you do find them, MARK YOUR SPOT!!!!  Rarely have I caught tulibee in a spot and never caught them again in the same spot.  I usually drill a ton of holes to hop around to find the area and depths I'm looking for but I have 3 lakes that I drill 2 holes when I fish, one for a transducer and one for fishing!  I also see with many people they use too big of lures and just get hits but no bites, aka fish swipes at the jig or spoon but it's too big for their mouths and the fish gets away.  Last year I had to downsize to a 3 mm jig (Perch size) to catch our big fish.

 

If something I said doesn't make sense or if you want to discuss lakes more detail in private message me and I'll give ya some two cents on where I'd suggest without the whole world wide web seeing.  I've had a lot of people messaging lately.  I'm going to try a new lake out hopefully Saturday morning down south of Ottertail if the blizzard holds off.

 

Word of warning...I butterfly my bigger tulibees for the smoker.  It takes less time to clean them if you have a sharp knife, allows better brine in to the meat, allows for a quicker smoke time, and most importantly I can see if the meat has worms.  Some lakes have wormy tulibees and I will not waste my time or money on smoking a wormy fish.  We've called DNR because we didn't want to get turned in for wasting fish because we had an 85% worm rate on a lake and they said to dispose of the fish just like we would for filet fish.  Some lakes are clean and you don't have to worry about them but some lakes it's bad! 

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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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