If you love to fish for walleyes through the ice, Lake Winnipeg is a special place to visit for trophy caliber fish. If you’ve never visited before, Jason Mitchell shares his top 5 tips to make your first trip easier.
1. Make sure you bring a group of people, especially if you’re doing a DIY trip, and make sure they all have their own gear. Lake Winnipeg is a lot easier to tackle if you use a teamwork approach. If you have any issues with equipment, a snowmobile, or have to move a lot to find fish, it’s not only easier, but safer, with a crew. On that note, you should also make sure that you have tracks on your ATV or use a snowmobile. It’s not too often that you can get through the snow with trucks on Lake Winnipeg.
2. Go with the a good attitude and leave the whiners at home. On this big body of water, sometimes the lows can be really low when you’re dealing with brutal conditions like cold weather, wind, and hard packed snow that can be hard on your equipment. You have to have an upbeat attitude and embrace the moment and realize that you might be having a rough day but at anytime you could be holding a Master Angler walleye in your hands. Any negative attitudes that creep in can really affect your trip.
3. Make sure that you upsize your tackle and hooks. Success on Lake Winnipeg means using bigger profiles and larger spoons and fishing a lot more aggressively than on any inland water in the States. If you fish too subtle and finesse, it seems like these fish back off.
4. Inspect and prepare your gear before you leave and keep close tabs on it while you’re there. For example, make sure you have runner kits on your flip-over sled and use a heavy-duty tow bar. Keep your electronics up on your machine if you can so they don’t get beat up. Don’t put anything breakable in your sled behind you because it will get rattled hard and is likely to break.
5. Respect the lake. Do NOT go out without your GPS and make sure everyone with has a GPS as well. A snowstorm or fog can move in at anytime and you won’t be able to see anything across this vast body of water, so you need to be able to make sure you can get back off the lake at night or in an emergency. This body of water can really punish you if you’re not well prepared.
