Vermilion Ice Reports 2021/22

[SkunkedAgain]

Let's get an ice thread going.

 

I saw on the fishing thread that someone said that Head O Lakes had open water prior to the most recent snowfall. Unless we melt off a lot of this snow, we are going to have a bad ice year. Is Big Bay completely frozen over?

[JerkinLips]

I heard there was a few open spots still last weekend.  Somebody walked out from McKinley Park on Saturday and found only 2-3 inches in the bay.  Now they got heavy snow and then very cold weather so all bets are off.  I delayed my first trip up until this Thursday to give the cold weather more time to work.  Hope to report decent ice then but I wouldn't bet on it.

[CigarGuy]

[JerkinLips]

CigarGuy are those your personal Facebook messages or from a Facebook group?

[CigarGuy]

33 minutes ago, JerkinLips said:

CigarGuy are those your personal Facebook messages or from a Facebook group?

From Facebook group, "Lake Vermilion Cabin Owners".

[SkunkedAgain]

Could someone just go out and quickly scrape all of the snow off of the ice? That would be great.

[Wicheesehead37]

Be safe out there JerkinLips if you do go out today.  Send a report when you can.  tight lines!

[BrianF]

About 6” give or take on S shore of Niles this morning.  

[CigarGuy]

Had about the same on the Partridge River.... About 1/2 down towards Black Bay. I went out about 30 yards from neighbors shore. Snowmobile track running down the middle of the channel from yesterday.

[StateofHockey]

Measuring 7 1/2 - 8" northwest of the Moccasin point landing.

Spoke with a couple of snowmobilers who had just come back from the VC across the lake.

Definitely some slush, but only 1-2" of slush so not too bad

[JerkinLips]

On 12/9/2021 at 9:14 AM, Wicheesehead37 said:

Be safe out there JerkinLips if you do go out today.  Send a report when you can.  tight lines!

I did go out Thursday morning at daylight.  Saw a handful of other parties out from McKinley Park.  I went with max safety (floating Striker Ice bibs, life jacket, ice picks and a 50 foot rope to my loaded portable house.   Must have looked like a fool, but better to be safe when traveling alone.

 

I checked the ice thickness every 500 feet and found black ice each time.  Thickness went from 9", 7", and 6" the rest of the way to half a mile out.  Then I found 6" thick consistently all around that area.  I found one bare spot of ice 50 yards from where I was fishing and found 9" of ice there.  Sure helps to not have snow cover (just that one spot I saw).

 

Thursday afternoon several snowmobiles and ATVs were running around so I decided to take my snowmobile out the next 2 days since it was tough dragging my heavy loaded portable in the soft snow.  On Saturday there were many snowmobiles, ATVs, and UHVs running around.  The ice thickness had increased from 6" Thursday to 7" Friday, and now 7½" Saturday.  I almost brought my small wood house out today but the weather forecast next week looks bad and I didn't want my house sitting in a pool of slushy water.

 

Fishing was good Thursday and Friday, and great on Saturday (27fow).  Chubs were better than pike suckers so I just fished with them after the first morning.  However, I did catch the pictured 28" (9#-1oz) fish on a reused pike sucker, my biggest walleye in 4 years.  Also landed a 25" walleye today.  Those fish look huge swimming under the clear black ice.  Had a hard time getting their heads into the hole.

 

One medium sized walleye caught Friday had over half a dozen of the pictured bugs in its mouth, but still wanted to eat the minnow.  Are these fresh water shrimp?

 

Don't know if I will make it back up next week due to the crappy weather.  If you venture out, good luck and be careful.

 

 

Edited December 12, 2021 by JerkinLips
Spelling

[tinker]

Great pictures as usual. Always enjoy your posts. Thanks

[Wanderer]

Yeah those look like shrimp.  The top center one especially.

 

Nice report!

[jkrash]

I think the little bugs are Hellgrammites , not shrimp, they eventually turn into some type of fly.

[Wanderer]

14 minutes ago, jkrash said:

I think the little bugs are Hellgrammites , not shrimp, they eventually turn into some type of fly.

That was my second choice. 
 

Saw a lot of them in trout fishing. 

Edited December 12, 2021 by Wanderer

[jkrash]

Ooops! I now think there Hexegena nymps, some will eventually be May flies.

 

[Wanderer]

3 hours ago, jkrash said:

Ooops! I now think there Hexegena nymps, some will eventually be May flies.

 

That wasn’t my third choice!   But the “Hex Hatch” is a thing up there.  Makes sense.

 

Got any other possibilities we can try? 

[Hookmaster]

You should have tried using those bugs for bait. I searched around but couldn't find a good picture of freshwater shrimp. I don't know if they are in big lakes. I've only seen them some sloughs in North Dakota.

 

 

[JerkinLips]

30 minutes ago, Hookmaster said:

You should have tried using those bugs for bait.

Would have been interesting.  The walleyes were gobbling up very small chubs so these bugs may have worked.  The walleyes may have been picking these bugs up from the bottom and stumbled across an easy minnow meal.

[SkunkedAgain]

I believe that they are called Xenomorphes. I'll find a picture somewhere...

[SkunkedAgain]

Found it

Edited December 13, 2021 by SkunkedAgain

[Wicheesehead37]

Khan Blood suckers!!

[SkunkedAgain]

[tinker]

I googled Dragon fly nymphs looks pretty close to pictures.

[BRULEDRIFTER]

Those are mayfly larvae 100%

[jim curlee]

Hexagenia Limbata

They burrow in the mud.

It would be interesting to know if the fish are just pickin the nymphs off of the bottom, or "rootin" them out of the mud.

If you have ever seen a hex hatch, or have seen those (clouds) on your locator, it would make you wonder just how many of those little dudes are burrowed into the bottom of the lake.

I'm no biologist(flyfisherman), but I'm thinkin it takes 2 years for them to mature up in this country.

 

Jim

 

Edited December 14, 2021 by jim curlee

[BrianF]

My guess is that fish are rooting these larvae out of the bottom.  I say this because there are spots on the lake which look like they are pockmarked with bluegill beds - although these are in much too deep of water to be beds.
 

We’ve always surmised those were depressions made by fish rooting out bug larvae from the bottom.  Our assumption has always been that suckers or whitefish were the species doing this, but the photo above suggests that perhaps even walleyes are doing it.   By the way, if you find areas on your electronics that look like this, they always seem to be good walleye fishing areas. Another clue? 

[JerkinLips]

4 hours ago, jim curlee said:

Hexagenia Limbata

From Wikipedia:

Hexagenia limbata, the giant mayfly, is a species of mayfly in the family Ephemeridae. It is native to North America where it is distributed widely near lakes and slow-moving rivers. The larvae, known as nymphs, are aquatic and burrow in mud and the adult insects have brief lives. They are often referred to as fish flies around the Great Lakes as they tend to cause the areas around water to smell like rotten fish.

Picture of the larvae (nymph):

[JerkinLips]

3 hours ago, BrianF said:

By the way, if you find areas on your electronics that look like this, they always seem to be good walleye fishing areas.

You are a real fisherman.  I just get lucky and spend a lot of time doing it.

[SkunkedAgain]

So in general it sounds like maybe the shorelines of most bays are strong enough for machines to travel but the centers may still be a little weak as they were just forming ice when the big storm hit the other week. 

 

I'm hoping to come up this weekend and go across the west end of the lake. I am happy to stick to shorelines to err on the side of safety.

 

CigarGuy - are there a bunch of snowmobile tracks going through the Partridge River or just the one that you reported?