I found this one from a few years ago and uploaded onto YouTube last night. The quality isn’t the best since I had to rip it from DVD and it was one of my first edits, so I apologize for the lengthy fight scenes and loud obnoxious music. It has some good shots though!
It’s Almost April
And there is still plenty of ice out there. If you look at the forecast and the amount of snow on the ground, you might think it’s January still. Spring seems a long ways off and I’m totally fine with that. The ice fishing opportunities this year don’t come around too often.
Collette with a coho salmon.
A couple of 18″ herring out of Lake Superior
Lake Superior Ice
Well it has been a good couple of weeks on the ice that is still holding up on Lake Superior. But who knows what this week’s warm temperatures, runoff, and the ice-cutting efforts from the coast guard will do to it. I hope it sticks around a little bit longer.
There have been large schools of coho salmon and herring in shallower, and the lake trout bite has been great out deeper. Personally I have landed several in the 3-6 pound range. Joel has been having an epic year landing a 10lb and 15lb in one weekend, and then getting a 17lb trout this past weekend! Most of our fish have been caught on bobbing sticks, basically just wire wrapped around a wooden hoop.
Coho Salmon
Bobbing for Lake Trout
Joel’s 17 pounder
Slow Weekend
A rack I made out of PVC for my ice sled to better organize my gear and rack my ice rods. The cover fits right over the top.
Careful where you step.
More Ice Time on Lake Superior
Beginning in Washburn, Wisconsin, we fished our way north towards Bayfield. We started out in a bay fishing off a break where it dropped from 5 feet down to 20 feet very rapidly.
Drew dropped his line down and right away a fish grabbed it before we could even get the door closed on the shelter and see what was going on. That gave us high hopes for some fast action. He reeled it in and it turned out to be a small steelhead which was released promptly.
It was still early and Drew seemed a little dazed and confused with the first fish caught the second his line got in the water.
A while later I caught a small splake. We spent some timing watching smaller whitefish come swimming through but not biting what we had to offer. It was pretty slow so we decided to move into some deeper water and fish with our vexilars. It wasn’t long and drew reeled up a rather large whitefish.
I caught a smaller whitefish moments later and those were all the fish we caught the rest of the day.
The next day we went further North out of Bayfield and again it was really slow with only a couple of small whitefish and splake caught.
A splake caught by Drew.
I explored a couple of miles further and found a drop-off that dropped from 15 down to 60 feet very quickly. There was also a lot of current in this area and within minutes I had a fish on. A nice lake trout around 20 inches. I got my line back down and had another one on, and then another. I landed 4 lakers in a short period of time (throwing back the smallest). I now had a limit.
I setup the house and jumped on the wheeler to drive back and get Drew on these fish. He landed several and we ended with 5 that we kept. It turned out to be a great day for us.
A good day ice fishing lake trout on Lake Superior.
As we were getting ready to leave, the snow had picked up and in no time at all it was a whiteout. All you could see was white in every direction and just a little bit of the near shore. It’s always good to have a GPS and a good idea of where you are at when fishing the Great Lakes. Visibility and conditions can change rapidly.
Drew is ready to go, but which way?