From: Bryan Bogdan – Wekusko Falls Lodge
What an end to our ice fishing season! The bite was unreal….and not ANOTHER ANGLER OUT THERE!! I was busy guiding the last group of fishermen, and my clients could not believe we didn’t see another angler, making it feel very remote when we would have 400 square miles to fish on one lake alone….all to ourselves.
The ice held out well with some cold nights tightening everything up, and allowing us to get to those areas where the fish were holding to. Many of the feeder creeks opened up which melted some of the adjacent ice, but checking the ice consistently getting tight to the open water was mandatory as it looked sketchy. Hole after hole after hole showed that we could push the limits…and the fishing was out of this world!
All the species with the warm weather and run off were pushing in tight to shore or in front of feeder creeks at 5-8′. Lake trout were this shallow as well, but we caught bigger fish in 24′ adjacent to fast shelves that bottomed out at 30′. The burbot were all spawned out already, but they were cruising anywhere and everywhere as well, but their big girths were all gone with the released eggs and milt. And again, we were the only ones out on the water that we fished.
We fished main lakes like Reed and Weksuko, as well as some small back country lakes.
Walleye were day specific for baits, the hyper glide was great one day…then sebile vibratos…then moonshine quiver minnows…then leech flutter spoons. Just proved you needed one of everything while chasing them. Pike was big old herring hanging a foot off bottom… and with water clarity lower attention to small detail was not needed. Lake Trout were all about tube jigs, 3-5″ with some tullibee belly. And we caught burbot all over fishing for all the other species.
That concludes our ice fishing season until this next November (hopefully), but of those die hard anglers…you can still fish the stocked trout waters in Manitoba. And they are getting active! We did fish for Rainbow and Brook trout one morning and all were caught on small spoons with meal worms or trout bait as scent.
Never a dull moment if you are a fisherman in Manitoba!
Bryan Bogdan
Wekusko Falls Lodge
877-358-2341
