Any serious ice fisherman encounters a few moments when he’s forced to question his own sanity. As my dad and I stepped out of a heated sleeper house onto the Upper Red Lake ice, a paralyzing frigid blast delivered a convincing argument for me to reconsider my state of mind.
It was mid-December, and temperatures dropped to nearly 30 degrees below zero overnight, and although the forecast predicted the mercury would approach zero that day, it still had a long way to climb.
Before we could turn and run back inside, Brad Hawthorne emerged from the Honey Badger — his heated quad-track Polaris Ranger.
“Let’s go boys! The fish are waiting!” Hawthorne shouted as he started grabbing our gear.
The respected fishing guide and Ice Force pro staffer had lured us out of the comforts of our PortaVilla Salem Ice Cabin with reports of an aggressive walleye bite farther out on the giant Minnesota lake. The action inside the house had been consistent, but we came to Upper Red Lake to experience the wild early season bite so many ice fishermen rave about. This was our chance.
Packed inside the Honey Badger, we slowly crawled across the barren icy terrain. Swirling wind gusts blew snow in every direction, forcing Hawthorne to rely almost exclusively on his GPS to navigate through the virtual whiteout.
With the cab full, Hawthorne’s helping hand, Dakota Swanke, traveled in the bed of the Honey Badger, completely exposed to the elements. I couldn’t decide if I should admire his toughness or worry about his lucidity. Either way, he earned a nice tip.
About 20 minutes into the journey, blue and black Otter shelters emerged like a desert oasis ahead. We had arrived at our home for the day.
Cold Front
Conditions had not been favorable during the young ice fishing season. Earlier that week, snow and a 50-degree temperature drop made the fishing challenging.
“Ice fishing in a shallow body of water like Red, cold fronts do affect the fish,” Hawthorne said. “Fishing kind of slows to a crawl, and the next day, we’re back to 40 to 50 fish. Guys will get on a bummer one day, and the next day, they’re heroes.”
With cracks forming everywhere and no plowed roads to the middle of the lake yet, the Honey Badger was the only reliable way to travel. Although we were the only fishermen within sight, Hawthorne said others would likely be headed to any accessible deeper waters as well.
“Being able to access deep water on Red Lake during cold-front conditions is key,” he said.
The Features Below
After checking the depth in our new location, I discovered “deep” is relative on Upper Red Lake. We were only about three or four feet deeper than we had been in our sleeper shack near Roger’s Resort off the southeastern shoreline.
“That’s a big hole when you’re talking about Red Lake,” Hawthorne said. “If you find even a foot deeper, something out of the norm on a flat, white piece of paper, it will stick out and hold fish.”
If you pull up a topographic map of Upper Red Lake, it’s easy to see what Hawthorne means. With a maximum depth of only 15 feet and steady depths between 10 and 15 feet throughout most of the lake, the massive body of water appears almost featureless. While the western half of the 120,000-acre lake is only open to the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, the eastern 48,000 acres of Upper Red Lake can still be an imposing puzzle to those who aren’t intimately familiar with the lake, and even some who are.
“A lot of the old-timers say that fish just roam Red Lake, and I can prove that different,” Hawthorne said. “There is tons of stuff out here.”
In the early season, the features that attract walleyes even include above-ice structure.
“When we have light snow cover, I’m looking for ice heaves, dark ice and snow patches,” Hawthorne said.
But with deep snow already covering the ice, he switched his focus to the bottom of the lake. With limited traditional walleye draws like points, humps, saddles, channels, sunken islands and breaklines, Hawthorne focused on less obvious characteristics.
“Everyone thinks it’s just featureless. It’s not,” he said. “There are little sand fingers, mud holes. The depth doesn’t change, just the content changes. That’s the stuff I start keying in on there.”
An underwater camera can be crucial in this seeking phase. When you find transition — rocks meeting weeds, hard bottom meeting soft bottom, a small mud hole in a sand flat, etc. — you’ll find walleyes.
“There’s more rock in this lake than people think, especially close to shore and out by the center bar,” Hawthorne said. “There’s more mud holes. There are sand wave ripples that cross and trap sediment. There are just a lot of things out there.”
It’s these features that create the elusive “spot on the spot” locations ice fishermen seek.
“When you catch a bunch of fish, take a look at what’s down there,” Hawthorne said. “And then you better rinse and repeat that during that time of the year. You’ll be successful.”
Search Mode
After honing in on some of these promising bottom features, Hawthorne begins looking for pods of aggressive walleyes.
“I’ll drill 20 holes, and I’ll see how many fish I can pull out of there in an hour under normal conditions,” he said. “You find your schools of fish.”
Hawthorne isn’t just looking for a good evening bite. He wants a spot that provides constant walleye activity throughout the day.
“So, at noon if I go out and pop 20 fish in an hour, I know that my customers should be able to do that too,” he said. “It’s drill until you find them and then start counting to figure out how big the school is. Then you move north, east, south, west after you find a pod of fish to see how big it really is.”
On Upper Red Lake, Hawthorne has had aggressive bites last for as long as five days. And the fishing competition is as likely to drive him and his clients out of a spot as a diminishing bite.
“People talk,” he said. “You take them out and they go to the resort and say, ‘Oh, we just pounded on fish.’ Or someone moves in and thinks, ‘What are those guys doing over there?’ Then you just end up moving on. You leave your leftovers behind and just go.”
Calling Them In
After Hawthorne discovers an area with encouraging features, he almost always starts with a Rapala Rippin’ Rap to gauge how aggressive nearby walleyes are. Even in the stained water of Upper Red Lake, the flashy lure with a hard-vibrating swimming action can be seen from a long distance.
“Walleyes will always come up and take a look at it,” he said. “But if two, three, four go by and you don’t hook them, then I’m usually going to the Tumbler Spoon.”
The VMC Tumbler Spoon has a slow tumbling action that even finicky walleyes can’t resist.
“You can get it to do whatever you want as far as action goes,” Hawthorne said. “It has a nice sideways wobble to it, a roll to it. And if you bait it different, if you just hang a full minnow by the head, it’ll sit there and do circles. So, you can sit there and kind of yo-yo the thing around.”
Practice your jigging motions just below the hole so you can see exactly how your jigging strokes affect the action of the lure. After you find the presentation you like, keep your lure near the bottom, and use the sediment on the floor of the lake to help attract fish.
“You see a lot of guys jig up too high,” Hawthorne said. “I am slapping the spoon or Rippin’ Rap on the bottom and trying to call them in that way. I’ll slap it on the bottom and then raise it up and see if anything comes up to me.”
Dead sticking a second rod in a nearby hole is also very productive. Some walleyes will come in to check out a jigging lure but won’t be aggressive enough to hit it. A jigging spoon left about a foot off the bottom with a lively minnow hooked through the tail is often too much for walleyes to ignore. You can use a glow lure to add another element of attraction.
Midday ’Eyes
As the sun set behind the trees on Upper Red Lake, we piled into the Honey Badger and began our journey back toward shore. The mud hole Hawthorne set us up on lived up to the billing and more.
From the moment we arrived in the midmorning to when Hawthorne pried us out of the Otter shelter to head back in, my dad and I pulled up walleyes. The fish were feeding on bloodworms throughout the area, and they were active and aggressive.
The Red Lake marble eyes came through in runs, but there was never a lull long enough for us to even consider moving to new holes. By switching lures to match the mood of the walleyes, the action remained very steady. And the thermal Otter shelter stayed surprisingly warm given the brutally cold and windy conditions outside. We fished without our coats on for most of the day.
I lost count of our exact total by the early afternoon, but we certainly came out on the good side of 40 walleyes — a great total for six midday hours on any lake. Most of the walleyes we caught were nice sized, in the 15- to 20-inch range, which Hawthorne said is pretty common for Upper Red Lake.
Back at the ice shack, my dad and I couldn’t wipe the smiles from our faces. Not only was it one of the most enjoyable days we’ve had on the ice, but it wasn’t even close to over. We shoveled dinner down as quickly as possible so we could take advantage of the famous Upper Red Lake night bite.
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