This report covers the last week. I had a busy week with 6 guided Sno Bear Outings and around 15 different groups I had in my sleeper ice house rentals. One sno bear outing the group had there own Ice Castle. I plowed them to a spot and helped them set up there ice house since they booked a guided sno bear outing. We are still on Upper Red Lake and will be doing some pre fishing on Leech Lake this week with the Sno Bear. Its that time of the year we want to get big fish so we will have some pictures coming soon. Early Last week we had a good bite seems the wheel houses averaged 12-15 walleyes per house per night. The bite has been turning into more of a low light hour bite. Most fish being caught have been in the 6-9 Feet of water range.
Starting on Friday into Saturday the bite started to slow down over the weekend. Almost everyone who left had there limit or close to there limit. I would say a combination of bad hook sets with the lake low this year about 5-10 fish a day are being lost at the ice hole. Fishing shallow by the time the hook is set the fish is only two feet below the ice. Some customers caught and released fish prior the slow down because they would have been at there limit then the bite slowed the next day. We had to work hard in the sno bear on Friday and Saturday. We fished one of the cribs pictured below and several rock piles. It sure is fun putting the camera down and finding huge schools of shiners. One of the cribs had the thickest school of shiners I have ever seen above it. I did catch a 28 inch pike next to one of the cribs. Was hopping I could get Louann Peterson to hook into a monster pike hiding next to the crib but that fish did not show up. I wish I would have taken a picture of the cloud of shiners on the camera. The North West corner of Upper Red Lake seems to be producing nice quality fish along with 1-2 miles out in front of Hillmans. Low light hours for about 1/2- 1 hour the bite is on fire. Then it seems 2-4 a.m. the bite picks up again. I think we will start to see more of a late night bite on Upper Red Lake the rest of the season. All year we have had a fantastic day bite. The key again seems to be try to stay away from the crowds and fish fresh ice. Saturday we fished several depths from rock piles on the east shore line almost out to center bar then back up into the NW corner. I did not find any consistency with lures this weekend. All fish caught in the Sno Bear were caught jigging. The rental shacks set lines seem to be the ticket.
I had a group of 12 guys from a repeat customer Garret Kirk. Fun group to work with they had a huge Hub set up with a grill in it most awesome set up I have ever seen. Special thanks to them I was filling propane tanks and they fed me a steak. Then another special thanks to Aaron Weixel he was grilling burgers the same night when I was swapping propane tanks and he fed me a burger right off the grill. I sure ate good Saturday night within 1/2 hour i had a steak and a burger then went to bed as I was exhausted after a 15 hour day guiding and tending rentals. I have a group checking in today from Nebraska. The lake sure was busy last weekend with the Ice Castle Owners Group down at Roerg and Red Fest going on also. Mid week the bite should pick up since we have had a few slower days. Pictures below are all from the last week. Just to show you how much ice we can cover with the sno bear in a day I had to upload the picture below. This is an amazing machine and a great piece of equipment to have for our customers. We look forward to February as we will target multi species.