First Ice Gold

Our weather pattern this year has been just whacked. We had wild swings of heat and cold; 60 degrees one week, 0 the next. Trying to get consistent ice to built was a bit of a conundrum and we were hoping for anything fishable.


The second weekend in December Adam, Paul and I attempted early ice. When we arrived at Cottonwood, the ice looked questionable at best, but the reality was 5 inches of good solid ice. We bounced around before settling into some timber in hopes of finding a waldo or perch. Paul finally kept us from being skunked (I would have said broke the ice but you know, taboo) and pulled in a dandy walleye! We spent the rest of the afternoon on this spot and ended up with three decent walleyes for the day. I did manage to catch a medium pike, so they were still in there, but the pike numbers are down significantly. Nonetheless, we had our first outing of the year in Clark under our belts.

The next day we figured we should head back to the other side of the lake where we were more familiar with the structure and hopefully find some more fish. We made the long slow trudge across with the spud bar and life jackets before reaching the far point. At the far point we encountered ice I have never seen before. It literally looked like the water froze in the middle of a wave. We should have taken pics of it, but the reality was more of the get the hell away from it. It was thinner ice and I did not want to mess with it. Once we walked the shoreline to a familiar spot, we started drilling holes and tried to find a fish.


This day was looking bleak as well.


It took us a couple of hours to find anything, even our tippers were not going off. When Adam finally found a perch, we pulled everything from the shallows and headed deep. Once we started, it was slow but steady stream of fish.

I managed a healthy portion of perch and even a couple of walleyes to the mix. BOY do the perch get big out here!


When it was finally time to pull the plug we grabbed gear and blasted out. We ended up taking out pic on the far side of the lake so people would watch us drop out a bucket full of fish.

As we arrived at the boat ramp, we were greeted by Officer Kyle, who checked our fish and licenses, and we talked a bit about the ice conditions.


Another great outing on Cottonwood, the only disappointment for me was the lack of pike. What once was a pike factory is seemingly depleted. I know everyone will want to fish that lake, but I think some exploring is in order for the ice season ahead.




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