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Now is the time!

January 29, 2012

This is now the best time to go out to your favorite ice fishing spot to re-visit those infamous fishing locations that you had in some previous year. Many years the snow was too deep or the slush was too much of a challenge, or you just didn’t have the time. NOW is the Time! You can drive to most fishing locations with any four wheel drive vehicle and on many lakes you can go 90% of the places you would like with a two wheel drive vehicle. Continue to be very vigilant about the ice heaves and/or open cracks on larger lakes and stay away from locations on the lakes that have rivers or streams running in to or out of the lake. You still need to stay away from those areas that historically show poor ice conditions because of springs or narrow channels that water moves through that would also keep the ice conditions less than desirable.


Late this past week I measured the thickness of the ice in many locations on a variety of lakes that I fish, I also chose new areas in a variety of locations out in the middle of Walker Bay of Leech Lake. The least amount of ice that I found in any location was just over 18” of ice. Overall the ice thickness ranged from 18” to 21”.


The fishing action has slowed in many places, but don’t lose hope! Most fishermen are still catching plenty of fish, including walleyes, perch, northern, crappies and sunfish. I am aware of a variety of walleyes that were released this past week in the 19” to 24” range. Customers are still catching those great eating size walleyes in the 12” to 18” size. I moved several houses this past week to some perch fishing locations in Walker Bay and customers are catching some nice perch and even some occasional walleyes in the 11” to 14” depths. The panfish enthusiasts are still catching limits of crappies and some sunfish on other area lakes. The panfish in most locations that we fish are still suspended up off the bottom of the lake, in some cases they are closer to the surface than the bottom of the lake. Several customers reported on two area lakes they found the larger crappies closer to the surface and the smaller crappies were staying in the larger schools of fish suspended 4’ to 8’ from the bottom. The largest northern caught this past week was a 32” beauty!


Visit our website at http://roericks.webs.com to learn more about our business and then give us a call and we will put you on fish.


So, now is the time, see you on the ice!


Gary RoerickRoerick Fish House Rentals
Office: 218-224-2836 Cell: 218-760-8266