Late Ice?

[Philo]

I am considering a late ice trip - possibily mid to late March. Am I correct in assuming that, on average, there will be fishable ice that late in the year? What about the average bite - is it more like early ice than mid winter?

[widetrack]

Quite often you can fish into April up here.<P>Mid to late March tends to be more of a shorline bite again. (as a general rule)<P>I tend to fish the last couple of hours of the day this time of year, which seems most productive. Easy for me to say, since I'm 5 minutes from fishing.

[Buckets]

Late ice is the best fishing, for my buck. Houses have till the end of March to be off the ice. <BR> It is short sleeve ice fishing sometimes it gets so nice. The sun seems to reflect off the ice and it can be very warm. <BR>Atv's are used mainly by the last wkend too.

[bturck]

I agree on the late March fishing, the biggest problem is god forbid another early spring like last year. I talked with Glenn and Rich this morning at Riverbend about our reservatin the last week in March. They do not have the same amount of ice as they did last year and a fair amount of snow. So they are certainly hoping for cold weather to prevail through March into the first part of April. Lets hope for the best. Follow Widetrack and Curt and the rest of the guys who are in that area, as they can provide us with some valuable information that time of year. Bill

[dougger222]

Two winter ago I fished up on Arnesens(sp?) two days before the sauger/walleye season ended. There was a foot of honeycombed ice on top of two good feet of ice. Vehicle traffic was done and I was even nervous on my wheeler. It was 50 the one day and my uncle was fishing in a t-shirt! There were bugs flying around the island we were fishing by!

[themink]

I gotta couple questions for u guys considering late ice too. we re planning on lookin for some pike near the reed river in buffalo sometime in march, im just wondering how we should go about this, tip ups outside, or can we fish in a portable house, or will we have our lines in a mess. also if we can take a portable do we need a canadien house liscense on it or dont they even have shelter liscenses up there. any help would be great thanx

[1tofish]

Mink<P>Here's a website for Manitoba fishing regs... <A HREF="http://www.gov.mb.ca/conservation/fish/images/guide.pdf" TARGET=_blank>http://www.gov.mb.ca/conservation/fish/images/guide.pdf</A><BR> <BR>I didn't see any place where it says you need a shelter license. I would use tip-ups. You can cover more area and yes, less line tangles.