River Bend Resort Lake of The Woods Ice Fishing Report January 13, 2022. With this past week’s weather warmup, the bite waned just a bit. However, you wouldn’t get many of the River Bend Resort guests to believe it. Just prior to the temperatures rising there was a good bite with lots of larger fish caught. The warmup lasted only a day or so. A weather front moved through bringing with it snow, and that my friends, created another nice bite which landed quite a few slot fish and many trophy walleye in the mix.
Where to Fish
Following the ever-moving giant schools of fish, we have moved our icehouse fleet once again. We are now approximately 4 miles out in front of Pine Island hugging the Canadian border to the east, sitting over 32 feet of water on 24” + of ice. We are still seeing 30 – 40 fish being landed daily per person with reports of some anglers landing that in an hour. If you are wanting to giver a go alone, we are seeing a slow but very good catch in the shallows around 17 – 19 feet.
What is being caught
The nice thing about how the fishing has been over the past few weeks is that a mixed bag of fish is being caught daily. Walleye, sauger, jumbo perch, pike, eelpout, and an occasional sturgeon are all still in the mix. And now we are seeing tullibee. Because we are following the schools, we are seeing a catch of walleye that spans the size spectrum. Most anglers are saying many eaters in the 13 – 14” range with several slot fish (19.5” – 28”). The larger 28.5+” fish are also being put on the ice with very good consistency.
How to fish
Not much has changed over the past week. The most successful anglers within our fleet all have landed larger trophy walleye by calling them in. If you remember from last week’s report the art of calling in a big walleye is simple.
While using the ‘ol “one-two punch” of a jigging rig and dead stick. Set up your jigging rod with a rattle spoon and your dead stick with nothing more than a blood red hook and live minnow. Set your dead stick several feet above the bottom – keep an eye on your electronics so you can adjust the depth as needed. Pound the mud bottom with the rattle spoon a few times then lift and jig slightly. This gives fish the idea that something just popped up out of the mud.
Larger walleye will come cruising in several feet above the bottom looking for what is causing the action. They will see the live minnow on your dead stick setup and strike it almost every time.
River Bend Resort guest, Captain Kurt Stracka and his wife Renee from Tustin, Michigan showed us that running this technique landed several very large walleye. And that my fellow ice angling fanatics is exactly how to get it done.
What has changed? Just a few days ago it was discovered that many of the fish being caught have been stuffed with crawfish. This means they are sucking them out of the mud. Also lends to why the pounding of the mud with a rattle spoon is calling them in. This presents a new technique. In addition to using colors of gold, hammered gold, glow (red, pink & green), white and yellow – this angler would switch to anything that resembles a crawfish. Color and actual look. Pound the mud with that and fish will be landed.
Beginning January 9th River Bend Resort started offering a very generous mid-week sale. When you book a mid-week ice package (Sunday – Thursday) at either the Walleye Inn or River Bend Resort, you will receive 10% off fishing only packages and 15% off all-inclusive packages. Book your ice fishing trip now! Don’t wait! River Bend Resort can set you up easily with just one call to our booking agents. We offer a variety of ice fishing packages that will suit any level of ice fishing experience and will fit any budget. You can find our offerings as well as pricing by clicking this link. In addition, we do offer online booking for those who wish to do so. Please keep in mind that if you should experience any difficulty with our online system, we are a simple phone call away from getting you set up and fishing with us on beautiful Lake of The Woods.
Until next week … Keep a Tight Line! Bugs & Fishes ≤º))~{
