Ice Out Walleyes Gary Howey
When fishing for walleyes this time of the year, they’re certain methods that will out produce all others.
I was reminded of this on a trip we took a couple of weeks ago up into South Dakota.
We were fishing with Team Outdoorsmen Adventures members Larry Myhre, Sioux City, IA. And Joel Vasek, Geddes, SD.
Joel runs the Missouri Valley Guide Service had excellent luck fishing up stream towards Chamberlain.
Because of ice on the river he had to launch above the dam at Ft. Thompson and then head up river to several holes that had produced on his last trip.
We were on our first drift through the spot with Joel jigging up front while running the bow mount with Larry on my right who was also using a jig.
With good fishermen like Larry and Joel, I needed all the advantage I could to keep up with them so I was cheating just a bit.
I was using two rigs, one a dead rod with a Lindy walking sinker jig with a Northland soft body floater riding about 2 foot above it off the bottom. While this rig bounced along the bottom, I worked my second rod with a jig off the back of the boat.
The first bite came on the dead rod, with a fat 15” walleye taking the minnow that was attached to the floater.
I wasn’t surprised as this rig has always produced for me, especially during the early spring season when water temperatures are cold.
It’s a no brainier rig as the fish tight to the bottom are attracted by the jig dragging along the bottom and those fish that are suspended above move in on the floater.
What I have is a rig that allows me to cover everything from the bottom and the two feet above it.
The rig works best when left alone to slide along the bottom and if there’s a little wind, the bouncing of the boat adds a natural action to the bait.
Almost any style of jig also works well, especially those that include a stinger hook as walleyes and sauger this time of the year love to grab the minnow by the tail and hold on until you set the hook and rip it away from them.
Stinger hooks aren’t anything complicated as all they are is a small treble or single hook that attaches to the jig.
The stinger hook trails behind the jig about 1” to 2”, allowing you to hook the minnow in the tail area, eliminating the short strikes that are so common this time of the year.
On this trip, my dead rod rig caught 6 walleyes while my jigging rod only took two.
Unfortunately, Lindy no longer makes the Lindy sinker jig, so I either have to cast my own or rework the eye of a standard jig.
When we headed back down river at 11:00, we were one fish short of our three man limit as there were a couple of places we wanted to check out on the way back.
As the dam came into view, it was pretty obvious where the hot spot was and it wasn’t far from where we launched.
Bunched up along the ice at the mouth of the spillway there were eight to ten boats anchored with all of them jigging right along the edge of the remaining ice.
We knew this was an effective method as Joel and I had did the very same thing the spring before on Lake Francis Case, breaking through a couple hundred yards of 10” ice in order to get to the open water that we would eventually fish in.
Since most of the area along the edge of the ice was pretty well covered by the anchored boats, Joel, using his bow mount trolling motor worked out from the ice.
The rest of the trip, we cast jigs tipped with minnows up along the edge of the ice, catching numerous fat walleyes that ran up to 18”.
No matter how you use a jig this time of year, it will work to take both walleye and sauger and continue working throughout the year as they are an all season bait and the only way they won’t work would be if you left them in your tackle box and didn’t use them.