With ice being sketchy at the best in many parts across the Midwest including Iowa the walleye wisdom fishing team decided we needed a trek north. Way north. Matt left Knoxville early on Friday 1/17/2020 and picked up brother Trenton and stepfather Steve in the Des Moines area. They tossed their gear in the Chevy and we headed to pick up Rickey our last occupant in Story City. There was an impending snowstorm so we were motivated to get moving.
We arrived in Baudette to take our photo with Willie the walleye and headed over to Warroad, MN. We had some difficulty finding the location of our outfitter we had planned on using for the next few days. Rich had listed Springsteel Resort as his location but he was actually on the ice. Rich had a very hard time remembering who made the reservation and where we which house we would be fishing out of in the morning. We spoke to the people in said shack, and they assured us they were leaving soon and the shack would be ours in the AM. We had a game plan for Saturday morning. We stayed at a lovely rental on the Warroad River. The next morning found us with 6 inches of fresh snow and attempted to get on the ice early only to find a cable across the road and very rude people clearing the road. We were told to come back 1.5 hours later even though we had paid for our road pass and never were told about access time.
After arriving on the ice we found father and his young son in the house we had been assigned. Evidently, their house ran out of gas and lights so they were moved to ours. They were very cordial and eventually we went to another shack after having heat and a new battery installed. This wasted our entire morning and left a bad taste in our mouths. We caught 7 fish between the 5 of us and left never to return. Moral of the story you get what you pay for. I would not recommend Richs sleepers out of Warroad.
After securing two days of fishing at Arnesens Rocky Point Resort we started our second day of fishing off fresh. We were greeted by friendly staff, warm transportation, and two heated shack that were clean and stocked with bait. What a different experience! We fished the next two days with some success. The groups caught a lot of walleye and saugers with the largest being just under the slot at 19 inches. We also managed to have a few guys catch their first burbot. We were checked on twice a day and transportation by Bombardier was on time and efficient. We decided to have the lodge clean our fish and enjoyed some adult beverages at the very nice bar/restaurant. I would highly recommend this resort.
What about the fish? We were fishing in 30 feet of water and the bite this year was on “smaller stuff “. Gold and red/pink colors still produced. However, it seemed that stop sign spoons and larger ones were not putting the fish on the ice. We had our best success with very small gold jigs and a whole minnow. The Northland buck shot flutter spoon was also a great bait! The Northland glo-shot spoon was also hot and has a small glow stick in it. If you have not tried this bait, you have too. Ripping Raps, Puppet Minnows, Rapala flat jigs, and Salmo’s were used to “wake them up” when the bite was slow. Dead sticks with live minnows were not producing like years past and we often had to jig them up 3-10 feet off the bottom to make them commit. The bite was best between 9am – 3 pm for us. We caught close to our limits every day and would go back to Arensens in a heartbeat. Please enjoy the pictures.
Matt Speicher – Field editor
