As a person who loves ice fishing at BOQ and gets there far too infrequently, I am guessing there are others chomping at the bit.
Well, we couldn't wait and hit a traditional spot on this side of the border. Red Lake, MN. 19 hours from Belleville. Sound like a lot? I drove 30 to get to Red Lake, so don't tell me it is too far. I don't know the current difficulty crossing the border, but do know Americans who finally went to Ontario early this fall.
Red Lake is sort of like Big Bau in BOQ, but way larger and has way more biting eater size walleye. Long story short, I had no issue getting three times my limit in fish each day. Some of the members of my group of four did struggle, but that's another story. Size is nothing like BOQ. My big was 24". A little too big to eat, but fun to catch. We did each keep our one over 18" and our three under. We also caught some decent perch, one trophy pike, and one unexpected prehistoric visitor, the Burbot.
3/4 of the fish came on dead stick, hook, split shot, tail hooked minnow. Spoons worked too, as long as you didn't move them at all and kept a lively minnow hooked. The only lure that seemed to work was a jigging rap (red and chrome was my favorite) with a whole minnow on the treble, or just a minnow head. Aggressive jigging.
Anyway, for those of you wishing you were ice fishing, here's a little porn. One additional note: if you have been considering the new lightweight augers that you can run with a drill and a lithium battery, we were very impressed with the 6 and 7.5 inch K-Drills. Crazy light, crazy sharp, and you can drill a lot of holes on one 5 amp hour battery. (No, I am not a shareholder, or getting compensated for saying that).
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