Brad Dokken: Saugers dominate the catch during Lake of the Woods ice fishing trip
Feb. 24—BAUDETTE, Minn. — A Lake of the Woods ice fishing trip to Ballard's Resort has been a December tradition for years, but that wasn't an option because of the late start to this oddball winter of 2023-24.
That finally changed last Monday, Feb. 19, when three of us spent a day on the ice after fishing sturgeon the previous evening.
A story about that excursion can be found elsewhere in today's Northland Outdoors print edition — or website, for those who read Herald content online.
Most winters, Lake of the Woods this time of year is covered with wheelhouses that sit atop 3 feet of ice, and resorts that don't plow roads shuttle anglers to their heated fish houses with Bombardiers or other large tracked vehicles.
This winter, many resorts — Ballard's among them — are limiting their transport to lightweight vehicles such as Geo Trackers that pull heated enclosed trailers to carry customers onto the ice.
"Motion sickness machines," a friend jokingly calls them, although I generally refer to them as "hoosegow wagons."
The ice is maybe 20 inches thick.
Scanning the horizon from our fish house, the number of permanent shelters set up on the ice appeared to be down considerably.
It will be interesting to see how much ice fishing pressure is down when the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources crunches the numbers from its winter creel survey on Lake of the Woods. If history is any indication, I wouldn't expect results from the survey until sometime this summer. Last winter, anglers logged an estimated 3.2 million hours of ice fishing pressure on Lake of the Woods.
That compares with 2.5 million hours during each of the previous three winters, but it's kind of an "apples and oranges" comparison, because
the DNR implemented a new creel survey design last winter
to better account for overnight pressure from anglers who spend days on the ice in wheelhouses.
How this winter ultimately shakes out remains to be seen, but the number of days with temperatures predicted to be in the high 40s over the next 10 days leads me to believe ice fishing will end early, even on border waters such as Lake of the Woods.
The Rainy River already is open upstream from Birchdale, Minnesota, which makes me wonder if Four-Mile Bay will be open to boat fishing by late March and Lake of the Woods will be ice-free by mid-April, like it was in 2012.
If we're not going to have a winter, we might as well get on with it and have spring.
Anecdotally, at least, fishing reports on Lake of the Woods are considerably better than last winter. Fishing last Monday got off to a fast start, as well, and the first sauger was in the bucket before we even had all of our lines in the water.
Set up over about 28 feet of water, our morning bite was just fast enough to keep things interesting, but that was followed by a midday lull, with slightly better action again in the afternoon. Our electronics almost always showed fish on the screen, but many acted like small fish.
The
DNR in its annual fall gillnet survey on Lake of the Woods
reported catches of 13- to 16-inch saugers that were above historic averages, and all of the saugers we kept fell into that size range.
By day's end, we'd scratched out a bucket with 16 "cookie cutter-size" saugers — two fish shy of our three-person limit — and if not for missing a few fish, we certainly would have filled our limit. The only walleye to show up at the end of the line last Monday was too small to keep. Saugers are the bread-and-butter of Lake of the Woods' booming winter fishery but not catching at least one keeper-size walleye was somewhat odd, I thought.
That's fishing, though, and the bucket of saugers we brought to shore was certainly respectable.
Speaking of fishing, the season for walleyes, bass and northern pike in Minnesota inland waters closes Sunday, Feb. 25, and Minnesota fishing, hunting and trapping licenses for 2023 expire Thursday, Feb. 29.
Walleye season on Lake of the Woods and other U.S.-Canada border waters continues through April 14, and pike fishing on Lake of the Woods is continuous.
In a news release, the DNR said licenses for 2024 are now available wherever fishing and hunting licenses are sold,
online
at
and by telephone at (888) 665-4236. Online buyers can print the license or choose to receive a text or email that when displayed on a mobile device serves as proof of a valid fish or game license to state conservation officers.
All 2024 fishing licenses become effective Friday, March 1. New licenses are required to participate in 2024 hunting and fishing seasons that continue past Feb. 29.
Meanwhile, anglers in North Dakota will need new fishing licenses Monday, April 1. Fishing season for all species is continuous in North Dakota.
