Heres the report.....
Drove all night Sunday and had a couple hours to sleep before the bait shop opened. Picked up licenses and some suckers, then headed up to the lake. We ended up at the landing by Evergreen Resort, the pumphouse landing was deteriorated. The ice was starting to pull off the shoreline, but still had 35" or more out on the lake. The ice was chunky and water logged, probably wouldn't have been safe if it was less than 15". No snow on top so we were running 40-45mph with the ATVs everywhere.
Opted to keep the skid house on shore, just in case the ice pulled away and we couldn't get it back off. Monday after unloading everything, we were fishing by 11am. Drove over to Carpenters reef and fished there until 4pm. I caught nothing, BIL had 3 and our other buddy had 2, he also lost a big one half way up. After that we moved to try new spots, but couldn't find the structure that we thought was there. Ended up in 31fow on a flat for the last couple hours of evening. Only one mark and I missed one on a tip up.
Tuesday we went up to the north end were we fished a lot last year. Found the structure easily, a literal cliff with a straight down drop from 70-102fow. No big ones, but we ended up with around 15 lakers on the day.
Wednesday we went back to Carpenters reef. Drilled holes a little deeper off the side of the reef. We each did fairly well. The first action of the day was on a tip up. I was using a 12" bourbot that I caught over on Winnipeg for bait, laying on the bottom. Flag went up and by the time I made it over there, all the line was spooled off and gone. Crazy fast.
I had a 9lb and a 16.5lb, to go with 6 other smaller fish. My BIL only had 2 fish, but one was 8lb and the other a fat 27.5lbs. Our other buddy caught 7, but nothing too big.
The 2 big ones (16.5 and 27.5) came on set lines, one on a 12" tullibee and the other on a 8" herring. The rest of our fish came on a mix of white tubes, smaller rattle baits, spoons, and chunks of tullie with treble hook.
Getting off the ice Wednesday evening we had to maneuver some ice chunks around at the landing to get off. Thursday morning we woke up and made the decision to head back home as the weather was staying warm and ice would only pull out further from the landing. All in all a good 2.5 days of fishing, bummer we had to leave after finding some bigger fish though.