BAUDETTE, Minn. – The Lake of the Woods ice fishing trip to Ballard’s Resort has been a December tradition for years, but that’s not an option due to the late start of this oddball winter of 2023-24.
That finally changed on Monday, Feb. 19, when three of us spent a day on the ice after sturgeon fishing the night before.
A story about that excursion can be found elsewhere in today’s Northland Outdoors print edition – or website, for those who read Herald content online.
Most winters, Lake of the Woods at this time of year is covered with wheelhouses that sit on top of 3 feet of ice, and resorts that don’t plow the roads of fishermen to their heated cottages. fish with Bombardiers or other large tracked vehicles.
This winter, many resorts – Ballard among them – are limiting their transportation to light vehicles such as Geo Trackers that pull heated trailers to take customers to the ice.
“Motion sickness machines,” a friend jokingly calls them, though I usually refer to them as “hoosegow wagons.”
The ice is maybe 20 inches thick.
Scanning the horizon from our fish house, the number of permanent shelters set on the ice appeared to have dropped dramatically.
It will be interesting to see how low the ice fishing pressure is when the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources crunches the numbers from its winter creel survey on Lake of the Woods. If history is any indication, I wouldn’t expect results from the survey until later this summer. Last winter, anglers logged an estimated 3.2 million hours of ice fishing pressure on Lake of the Woods.
That compares to 2.5 million hours in each of the previous three winters, but it’s kind of an “apples and oranges” comparison, as the DNR implemented a new creel survey design last winter to better account for overnight pressure from to fishermen who spend several days on the ice on wheels.
It remains to be seen how this winter will shake out, but the number of days with temperatures predicted to be in the high 40s over the next 10 days leads me to believe that ice fishing will end early, even that of boundary waters such as Lake of the Woods .
The Rainy River is now open upstream from Birchdale, Minnesota, which makes me wonder if Four-Mile Bay will be open to boat fishing in late March and Lake of the Woods will be ice-free in mid-April, like in 2012 .
If we don’t have winter, we might as well go ahead and have spring.
Anecdotally, at least, reports of fishing at Lake of the Woods are better than last winter. Last Monday’s fishing also got off to a brisk start, and the first sauger was in the bucket before we even had all our lines in the water.
Setting up in about 28 feet of water, our morning bite was just brisk enough to keep things interesting, but that was followed by a midday slowdown, with slightly better action again in the afternoon. Our electronics almost always show fish on the screen, but many behave like small fish.
Brad Dokken / Grand Forks Herald
The DNR in its annual fall gillnet survey at Lake of the Woods reported catches of 13- to 16-inch saugers above historical averages, and all of the saugers we kept fell within the range of that size.
By the end of the day, we had scratched up a bucket with 16 “cookie cutter-size” saugers – two fish shy of our three-man limit – and if not for missing a few fish, we would have filled our limitation. The only walleye that appeared on the end of the line Monday was too small to keep. Saugers are the bread-and-butter of the Lake of the Woods booming winter fishery but not catching a single keeper-size walleye is pretty odd, I thought.
It was fishing, however, and the bucket of saugers we brought ashore was certainly respectable.
Season, license reminders
Speaking of fishing, the season for walleyes, bass and northern pike in Minnesota inland waters closes on Sunday, Feb. 25, and Minnesota fishing, hunting and trapping licenses for 2023 expire on Thursday, Feb. 29.
Walleye season in Lake of the Woods and other US-Canada border waters continues through April 14, and pike fishing in Lake of the Woods continues.
In a statement, the DNR said licenses for 2024 are now available wherever fishing and hunting licenses are sold, online at mndnr.gov/buyalicense and by phone at (888) 665-4236. Online buyers can print the license or choose to receive a text or email that when shown on a mobile device serves as proof of a valid fish or game license to state conservation officials.
All 2024 fishing licenses will be effective Friday, March 1. New licenses are required to participate in the 2024 hunting and fishing seasons that continue past Feb. 29.
Meanwhile, anglers in North Dakota will need new fishing licenses Monday, April 1. The fishing season for all species continues in North Dakota.
