Fog and fishing flurries highlight day enjoying Lake Winnipeg's winter walleye paradise

Feb. 10—ON LAKE WINNIPEG, Manitoba — We'd barely gotten set up, and I didn't even have a line in the water yet, when Jim Stinson hooked up on the kind of fish that draws anglers to Lake Winnipeg in droves every winter.

And there it was — just like that — 26 1/2 inches of beautiful Lake Winnipeg "greenback" walleye, those footballs with fins known for their iridescent bluish-green backs unique to the massive Manitoba lake, which picks up where the Red River leaves off on the northward journey to Hudson Bay.

After a couple of quick photos, Stinson sent the walleye back to the depths.

Now that's the way to start a day of fishing.

It was Saturday morning, Feb. 3, and I'd finally made the trip north to join Stinson for a day on the ice at Lake Winnipeg. A retired RCMP officer from East Selkirk, Manitoba, Stinson has been averaging about two trips a week to the big lake since mid-January.

Fishing's been good.

We've known each other more than two decades now, Stinson and me, and have fished together numerous times over the years, including a

trip last June to Lake of the Prairies in western Manitoba

that served up some of the best walleye fishing I had all summer.

Most winters, Stinson uses a snowmobile to reach his favorite fishing spots on Lake Winnipeg, but this year's oddball winter, with its warm temperatures and lack of snow, has allowed him to get around the ice by truck without having to worry about getting stuck.

Because there are no maintained ice roads on Lake Winnipeg — not where we fished, anyway — Stinson followed a well-traveled set of tracks out from shore to the spot where we set up north of Balsam Bay on the big lake's southeastern shore. GPS tracks from previous trips to the fishing spot allowed him to navigate around huge areas of rough, jagged ice and a couple of pressure ridges.

With five holes drilled in a straight line, we were set up in Stinson's hub house and fishing atop 26 inches of ice over 19 feet of water before 8:30 a.m.

Getting an early start has been crucial this winter, Stinson says, because there's been a "bite window" in the morning, followed by a midday lull and then another flurry later in the afternoon.

This day followed a similar pattern.

Like so many anglers these days, Stinson has jumped on the forward-facing sonar bandwagon, purchasing a Humminbird Mega Live unit last summer. The whiz-bang piece of electronics gives him a view of the underwater world that would have been difficult to comprehend not that many years ago.

The unit clearly showed all four of our lines, and even the barrel swivels Stinson tied onto his two lines about a foot above his jigs to prevent line twist were clearly visible. When a fish cruised by, it was obvious, even belly to the bottom. At other times, huge schools of baitfish swimming just below the ice lit up the top of the screen.

I started the morning using my Humminbird Helix 5 — an effective but rather primitive piece of electronics by comparison — but found myself spending more time staring at my lines on the screen of Stinson's Mega Live. Before long, I turned off my electronics and pulled the transducer from the water.

For whatever reason, most of the walleyes cruising along the bottom of the lake were moving from right to left on Stinson's screen. That gave him first crack at the walleyes, and he made the most of the opportunity.

That's my excuse for getting outfished, at least, and I'm sticking to it.

Lake Winnipeg has a well-deserved reputation for producing trophy walleyes — the province's popular "Master Angler" program database indicates nearly 7,400 walleyes meeting the 28-inch minimum requirement have come from Lake Winnipeg over the years — but most of the fish we landed during the morning flurry were of the "nice eater" variety.

Manitoba regulations that took effect in April 2023 require anglers to release all walleyes 55 centimeters — about 21.6 inches — and larger. Previously, anglers could keep one walleye longer than 70 centimeters — or 27.5 inches — per year on Lake Winnipeg.

That regulation was tough to swallow for 10-year-old Cain Furstenau of Cavalier, North Dakota, who landed a behemoth walleye Sunday, Feb. 4, on Lake Winnipeg that measured 31 inches with a girth of 18.6 inches. Using the formula for estimating the weight of a walleye — length x girth x girth / 750 — Furstenau's big fish weighed an estimated 14.3 pounds.

"He had a hard time accepting the new regulation on releasing this 31-inch fish," said Cain's grandpa, Roger Furstenau of Cavalier, who shared a photo of his grandson's Lake Winnipeg giant.

After our fast morning start, the midday lull hit right on schedule, and the occasional fish that moved through on Stinson's Mega Live showed little interest in biting. Action picked up again later in the afternoon, and by the time we reeled up our lines and called it a day shortly after 5 p.m., we'd landed our four-fish walleye limits and released a few others too big to keep.

Stinson's hot lure was a small, pink and white Northland Buckshot Rattle Spoon tipped with a minnow head, while I had my best luck with a 3/16-ounce silver

"Dinner Bell" spoon,

also tipped with a minnow head.

The 26 1/2 -inch walleye Stinson caught to start the day was the biggest of the excursion, but he also landed a 25-incher. We caught probably 15 walleyes in all and lost or missed a few others.

The morning had dawned cloudy and hazy, and visibility was good when we hit the ice, but heavy fog rolled in later in the day. By the time we loaded up Stinson's truck for the 3.7-mile drive back to shore, visibility wasn't more than a few feet.

There were some dicey moments trying to find the path around the extensive stretches of jagged ice, but Stinson's GPS soon had us back on track and we made it to shore without incident before dark.

The way this winter has been, that's the mark of a successful trip any way you measure it.

Whew.

The original plan was to fish Sunday, as well, but in a fit of common sense, we decided to heed the dense fog warnings and spend the morning enjoying coffee and conversation instead before I hit the road back to Grand Forks.

In hindsight, it still seems like the right choice.