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With the temps rising, my buddy Matt and I wanted to try someplace different before the ice melted away and I'd seen some pictures of some big perch being caught on a prairie pond a way away from Rapid. Having the location through a friend, we decided to give it a try. We found the pond and found that despite the warming weather and wind, the pond still had two feet of ice on it and it was in good shape. It wasn't hard to see where others had been, so we used our K-drill to s

The ice season is coming to an end for us and with the nice days, was fun getting out, for possibly our last trip, searching for bass. Many fish become more active with the warmer weather, brighter days and, the need to feed for the coming spawn. Targeting bass on the ice is trial and error until you find the depth that they are using as their travel routes. Once that is figured out, meaning deeper or shallower water, then moving around at those depths fishing is the name of

Year two of my good friends, Cody Mundy, James Cornell, Steven Sereg along with newcomers Marcus Sereg and Nate Harvey. These fellows made the 10 hour trek up to my neck of the winter woods for some fishing camaraderie and a ton of snowmobile riding in the back woods of Northwestern Ontario. Late last year I purchased a remote cabin located 20 miles in the North Arm of Rainy Lake. It’s situated near some of the best snowmobiling and ice fishing destinations in the area. Arriv

Headed south for the day on Lac Qui Parle with Todd and some of his friends. And what a day it was, as conditions were perfect for a crappie search. From the report, the crappies were going and I've never fished this reservoir before , so I packed the gear up and headed down for the day on Saturday. The weather couldn't be more perfect for a day on the ice for some fishing and relaxation. Once I got there, the ice conditions were okay for getting out, but the worry was gettin

Things are beginning to warm up around the Black Hills as the month of March came in hard with the blizzard a couple of weeks ago, but now things are transitioning to spring. Around here, though, warmer weather doesn't necessarily mean thinner ice, at least not for a bit yet. I was up on Deerfield on one of the last cold days we've had since the blizzard to see if the big rainbows were still in the area. I hadn't been there in a few weeks, but in that time, the ice has certai

After digging out from the blizzard that rumbled through the Black Hills over the last couple of days, this weekend's sunny weather should bring a much needed respite from shoveling and plowing through the snow on top of the ice could now present challenges like covering up pressure ridges and acting as an insulating layer against the ice, so caution would be advised when venturing out onto an unfamiliar lake. With that in mind, here's the current fishing report from the area

Taking advantage of the local ice while we can, makes for fishing new waters and new adventures. Always enjoy new challenges, the research that goes into finding the lakes that have the species that we want to target, makes the catching that much more rewarding. First lake has a lot of deep water and wanted to probe those depths looking for the crappie that are there. Spent a couple of hours searching through deep water, near shore locations and shallower flats. Marked very f

There's no doubt that it is hard to resist the pull of a Lake Trout. Having caught some of them over 28" over the last several years, there is no freshwater fish that can match their fighting ability or for the duration that they continue to resist coming up through an 8" hole in the ice and while most of the bigger ones I've caught while going after other fish (usually on very light line and tackle), the chance at catching specimens over 30" is a large pull to go to Pactola

We always have heard that the fishing is crazy with an impeding storm front coming, there are some that would argue that isn’t true and others will say yes, it is. As with any opportunity to go fishing, many of us take advantage of the time that we are given on a given day. Concentrating on the deeper lakes’ basin, the crappies weren’t hard to find but the size was the issue. Many of the fish caught were in the 10-inch range and only a couple were able to get over the 12-inch

With my friends Chad and Kelly in town this past weekend, they'd expressed a desire to go after Lake Trout on Pactola since they'd never caught one before. As I hadn't gone after them this season yet and hadn't caught one myself in a couple of years, I agreed to try to help them scratch that off their list. Some advice from others told me that the jigging bite was very slow, and most fish were being picked off with dead sticks, so I made sure we had some shiners to put on the