Officially Begins With Our First Stroll Onto The Ice!!
It’s Not For The Faint Of Heart Though!
If you are a ‘SOLO’ fisherman or get real skittish real easy, now is not the time to be going Ice Fishing in and around Devils Lake. Ice depths vary from 0 (open water) to the very rare 7 inches.
The best chance at finding good, stable ice is the Northern Feeder Lakes but they are by no means a sure thing as there are still Canadas and Ducks keeping spots open. Do not go into a spot in the dark and DO NOT, DO NOT go alone.
We contemplated not even doing a report or offering locations yet but there is definitely fishable ice and we would be remiss if we didn’t bring this information to you.
This Morning!
The A.M. shift saw us targeting Walleyes and traveling to one of the Northern Feeder lakes where we found 5-7 inches of ice. We threw lots of lures at them but the best presentation was by far the plain hook/minnow/bobber. Landed 4 and missed a handful with quick ‘bobber downs’ only to set the hook on nothing.
Fish Activity was pretty much done by 10 a.m., definitely an early morning bite right now.
This Afternoon!
This was shaky as we went into the main body of Devils Lake not knowing what to really expect in the way of ice thickness. What we found is about what we expected, 3 shaky, shaky inches. Add to that the temperature flirting with 40 degrees and calm and comfortable while we were on the ice was not the condition we were in while we were fishing. As I said, not for the feint of heart.
Some of the fish came on plain hooks with minnows under a bobber, the others came on a 1/8 ounce Orange/Chartreuse Buckshot with a minnow head, 10-11 feet of water.
Going Forward!!
We will begin our weekly schedule this week and bring you the information that we usually do. The temps this week are NOT conducive to ice production and we may suspend operations, depending what we find the next couple of days.
Good Luck out there!
Thanks for information Travis. We are seniors but have quite a bit of ice experience. Can we find reasonable priced room in Devils lake. We’d like to come over from Roundup Mt. for a week or so in case the weather throws us a curve. Can you give us some tips on where to try and if we should consider atv or can we access decent areas by road. Thanks for your time.