Lake of the Woods South Shore Ice Fishing, Snow & Trail Report

Sportsman’s Lodge

Baudette, MN

www.sportsmanslodges.com

800-862-8602

2/10/2010

A vexilar is the key…

The nice keeper walleyes and saugers have been a little finicky lately. Those with vexilars have been out fishing the non vexilar fishing people 2-1. We are still seeing some suspended fish 5, 10 even 15 feet off the bottom, so a vexilar defiantly helps out to find these fish. Don’t have a vexilar? No worries we rent them at the lodge, give us a call to book yours ahead of time.  We continue to see a nice mix of walleyes and saugers.

 

The best tackle seems to be the gold jig, anything that glows and buckshots. The reef houses up north have done okay, but we are still waiting for the bite to really get hot. Once the reef fishing really takes off it usually goes right thru the end of March so we will continue to move more houses that way as February moves along. The best depth outside of Pine Island on Lake of the Woods is between 34’-36’ right now and up on the reefs 28’-36’. The weather as been steadily getting colder the past 3-4 days, we saw a big dip to -25 this morning however it doesn’t look like the cold temperatures are going to hold on very long. Friday starts a warming trend of highs in the upper teens and twenties. The warm up and steady temps should help the fishing.

Unusual Catch

Jon Anderson from Eden Prairie caught a 26 inch whitefish staying in one of our sleeper houses lately. These fish are not normally caught at this end of the lake but more so up in the northern parts of the Ontario section so this was a surprising catch.

A huge sturgeon…

A 66 inch sturgeon weighing approximately 75 lbs and 35 years of age was recently caught on the lake. Check out this monster sturgeon Josh Beckel, from Baudette, MN submitted to us.  Josh is 6’6” tall and as you can see the sturgeon is almost goes to his neck! Wow! What a catch. Josh was fishing for walleyes when he snagged into this sturgeon. The sturgeon was immediately safely released after the picture was taken.
Ice Conditions
We have gained an inch or so of ice this past week. We currently have about 30”-32” of ice covering the areas we travel and fish.

Trail Report
Lake Trails

The trails from Baudette to Warroad and Baudette to Oak Island are in excellent conditions. We just received another couple of inches of snow this past Sunday and the groomers are out today and tomorrow. It is definitely nice to see a little more sun than we have been used to and you gotta love the later sunset time, it really makes for a nice long day to enjoy the trails.

Land Trails

After the fresh blanket of snow the trails are back into excellent condition. The groomers are out and the trails are waiting for you.

March brings you a Winter Walleye Special!

Come up in March on a Sun – Thurs stay and book a 2 night 2 day fishing package or better and receive $25 off your package (on the already lower midweek rates) and a free $20 voucher for food, beverages or gift shop items. Sportsman’s Lodge Rainy River dates available are March 7-11, 14-18, 21-25 & 28-31. Oak Island dates March 14-18. Got a group of 8 or more? We will double the vouchers to $40 per person!