Devils Lake Diamond and Gold Mine

Persistence is usually the key on The Big Devil

We were able to get in to hard days of hole drilling in before our Christmas Blizzard hit. After about a day and a half of not much excitement, persistence and a stubborn desire to find fish resulted in a pretty good day on Christmas eve.

As we were speculating where to attack for our brief window of good weather it was decided to go somewhere we could drive trucks so we could cover as much ice as possible. There aren’t many spots that allowed us to do that.

The Northern feeder lakes are an option as Lake Irvine had 16-18 inches of ice on Thursday. However, we wanted a chance at a Gold Mine strike so we targeted the main lake.

Friday saw us getting a late start due to family responsibilities and we got stuck on the access. Once we ‘plowed the road’ with a little help from Ethan and Jacob, we were able to both explore ice thickness and eliminated water.

Persistence is the Key

Friday only rewarded us with two fish, but it also gave us a starting point for Saturday morning.

Finding fish on the Devils Lake is often a 2 day ordeal, one day to eliminate water and give yourself a starting point for the following morning and then the following day to dial it in. This would be the case on December 24th.

I had gotten a mark on my vexilar on Friday evening about 4:30 that covered 2 feet on my vexilar in 23 feet of water with my gain on ‘0”. It may have been the largest mark I have ever seen on a 28.

Troy and I made the decision to start there the next morning. The 23 foot flat basin is a common early ice roaming spot for both Perch and Crappie and we figured the monster mark was a big eye or pike cruising for Perch snacks.

Just before sun up I was marking a pretty big mark suspended 4 feet off the bottom and raised my lure to investigate. Thinking this was a lurking pike, I just wanted to catch him in order to remove him from the water. Much to my surprise, this bad boy hammered my Clown Rapala Jigging Rap:

After the Golden Hour was over, we started drilling hole sets, the majority of which were in that 14-16 inch range. As I moved south dissecting the basin I did hit a spot that had only 9 inches. I stopped my southerly movement and started working the basin from east to west towards where my partner had found some fish.

He was drilled in on the edge of an overhanging point and was marking fish, so I commenced to drill the underlying basin that had two inside turns on it creating a small inlet.

As I narrowed in on fish, we were able to dial in about a 30 yard by 30-yard section of water where we were marking most of the fish. I wasn’t able to set up shop on one spot, but was hole hopping 3 minutes at a time and picking off the more active Perch and Crappies.

The top of the overhanging point was up in 12 feet with a sharp descent to the inlet basin I was on.

At 4 o’clock, and needing 4 more eyes, I moved up to the point, the pre-storm walleyes were on the feed and in short order I was able to fill my walleye limit with the same Clown Rapala Jigging rap.

The Perch and Crappies all came out of 23-24 feet of water in an inlet basin under a sharp incline and were all caught on The Gold Varmint tipped with a minnow head. The 4 smaller eyes came off of the elevated point in 12 feet of water on a Clown Rapala Jigging Rap. The bruiser came in 23 feet of water out in an open basin on the Clown Rapala Jigging Rap, all tipped with minnow heads.