Lake Winnipeg Ice Fishing Report January 2-6, 2019

Walleye Wisdom Team members Dan Goiffon and Cliff Klein from Cedar Rapids, IA, spent three days chasing “big green” walleyes on Lake Winnipeg earlier this month. Lake Winnipeg, located in the Manitoba. is a very large, but relatively shallow 24,514-square-kilometre lake. It’s southern end is about 55 kilometres north of the city of Winnipeg (Wikipedia). The maximum depth is 36m (118 ft). Resident fish include carp, walleye, lake whitefish, and goldeye. “We stayed at Canalta Hotel at Selkirk and traveled a little over an hour each day to our fishing spots,” Dan commented. Their guide service was Black Water Cats. “We drove our vehicle behind our guide vehicle out to our fishing spots each day. There was another group of eight anglers being guided by Black Water while we were there,” Cliff said. Manitoba requires using barbless hooks. “Overall, the fishing was slow for us,” Cliff reported. Their first two days allowed them to move around but the third day found them using their truck as a windbreak. Their presentation was either blade baits or salmon style spoons. “Most of our fish came on the spoons,” Dan said. “We brought our own Vexilars but used the guide’s rods/reels and baits,” he added. “We could watch the fish follow our baits on the Vex, up and down, but they were hard to commit,” Cliff said. “We were told over 13 million pounds of walleye are commercially fished out of Lake Winnipeg annually using five inch gill nets. All those fish supply walleye for North America and Japan,” Dan added. Would they go back to ice fish? “Yes!” they replied. “Just remember the drive from Cedar Rapids to Lake Winnipeg is 13 hours,” Dan said. We thank them for their report and pictures!

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