Lake Winnipeg wins round one

Leaving Winnipeg at six in the morning we were the first truck to venture out on the frozen surface of Lake Winnipeg. A group of anglers had decided to walk out but previous reports indicated a good solid base of ice, 16 inches on the average. Soon the ice was covered behind us with vehicles. Along with me this day was Steven Wintemute from Hooked Magazine and Darrin Bohonis, another friend.

I was driving with Vince D’Angelo who I had met through the Fish Futures banquet committee. The four of us headed north onto Balsam Bay to be stopped by a huge ice ridge about a mile after driving on the lake. Setting up along the ridge we decided to put up our portables to keep out of the steady rain that was falling this morning. Yes, that’s right rain in the middle of December. It would later make the roads pretty slippery, a consideration when we decided to leave a little earlier than normal at the end of the day. As Darrin showed me the new features on the GPS Unit mounted in tandem with my Ice 55, I could only marvel at the technology. With a Navionics chip of Lake Winnipeg I will be set for the winter on all my ice fishing ventures to this part of the world. Best yet the GPS unit can be popped of the ice fishing mount and put on the mount in your vehicle. I will have more on this amazing unit in another story.

My usual fishing partner Jim Price was about an hour behind us. We saw him a short time later about a quarter mile way. While I marked one nice fish on my Ice 55 to start the day, I did not get him to bite. Meantime Jim had hooked up with four fish right away. And it was to continue like that for the rest of the day even though Vince I matched Jim and his two friends spot for spot and hole for hole as we moved around the lake. Our total for the day was two perch, with Darrin and Steven catching one walleye total. Not so Jim.



My one fish, a perch came on a Live Target



Jim and his two buddies caught six walleyes at the end of the day in eight feet of water, making their total 16 for the day. Jim caught 12 of them. Part of the reason that they did so well is mobility. Drill, fish for 15 minutes and see if you are marking fish. Try and catch them two different ways. This is how Jim did it for your future reference...a still line with jig and minnow which has his flasher set up...he periodically will come over and look at the flasher and jig..if he sees a mark, he will move his jig to trigger a bite...he will move it anyway even if he doesn't.

He doesn't use a flasher on his aggressive rod..he just works the column with a longer rod, and sweeps his jigging rapala up slowly and then on a slow drop. He had a full minnow on the bottom treble. When the fish are scattered like yesterday I think this is the key... yesterday we should have started in eight feet, moved out as the day went on, and then back shallow. I won't make this mistake twice.

Okay, round one to Jim.

Merry Christmas

Now is big fish time on the Red River!

Cold days and even colder nights with limited or no snow cover is making some awfully good ice. This bodes well for some great ice fishing in the province this year. I can remember in both 2007 and 2008 first ice walleye fishing on the Red River north of Selkirk was on fire. With great fall fishing this year on the Red many anglers are predicting a great ice season on the river. And guess what it is happening right now!

My first trip in December 2008 was to a section of river north of Selkirk which had extended stretches of deep water, in the twenty to thirty foot range as an average. After spending some time drilling holes and then checking it out from the boat in open water it just seemed to be a big flat at the end of a deep hole along a straight stretch of the river. If you had to pick this kind of area out of a dozen other better looking areas you would be a magician. For whatever reason though, it consistently holds big fish, really big fish. Along this day was friend Darrin Bohonis, a hardcore fisherman who also reps Minn Kota and Humminbird. We unloaded our vehicles in the early morning light, filling our two sleds with an auger along with our own portable ice shacks. We headed out to the middle of the river, careful to check for thin ice, a very real consideration at this time of the year. Soon we had our holes drilled, our two ice shacks set up twenty feet apart so we could compare notes of what was happening on the electronics. Both Darrin and I were using the Humminbird ICE 55 flasher, the most critical element in this type of fishing.

As we dropped our transducers down the hole, we adjusted the depth in the hole to make sure we could have our lures within the cone. This would allow us to watch our baits and to react to any fish that might appear below.

While ice fishing, you are allowed two lines, so on my still line I put on a 3/8 ounce blue jig tipped with a big salted shiner. On my other rod I had tied on an in line swivel to prevent line twist, then a small cross lock snap so I could change baits. I decided to use something big and aggressive, a gold Hawger spoon with a rattle and a long single hook. I have found with bigger jigging spoons that if you use a single hook, your hooking percentage becomes a lot higher. It was certainly the case this day as I landed all four bites on my jigging spoon, two of which were walleye well over eight pounds. My still line didn’t disappoint this day either, landing the same number and ratio of walleye. So here’s the deal, my jigging spoon fish all came at least eight feet off the bottom while my jig fish were within a foot and a half. With limited current, you will find a lot of big fish suspended at this time of year and without electronics you won’t have a chance to catch them. This also holds true in the big lake. A large number of the walleye suspend on Lake Winnipeg as well, especially when they move out to main basin areas during the middle of the winter. Fishing out of a portable shelter with a heater allows you to focus on your electronics, the key to catching suspended walleye.