East end of Sakakawea

Lungdeflator

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Does anybody here fish the far east end of Sak? Is the ice sketchy in that area?

Talking about the area between snake creek pump station and mallard island.
By the looks of Navionics, there is a ton of structure around there. I'm hoping to get down there and scout around with the underwater camera one of these days.
 


Tillerman2095

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Bays are froze over pretty good with 12" so far. Main lake is different story maybe 5". Just a word of advise, what ever respect you have for the big lake in the summer extand that 10 fold during the winter. Drill, drill, and drill some more. Ice on Sakakawea is always changing. I've seen areas open up even during the cold months of January and February. Even more so in the river section from Tobacco to Skunk. There is warm water areas moving up all the time. Plus the Corps ramps up releases during the winter months for spring draw down. Be careful.
 

Lungdeflator

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Definitely going to be careful out there. I ran into a bad situation 4 years ago in between Gov. Bay and the dam. So yeah, going to check the ice for sure.
Seems I never see anybody ice fish that area though, must be a reason for it I guess.
 


MSA

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I ice fish around there, I never drive over there, usually park at the pump station n drag my sled down the corner where there's not many rocks. I haven't hit it this year, but driving by, the ice looks rough, like the wind busted n piled it all up before it refroze
 

Migrator Man

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East end can be hit or miss. You will probably mark fish every time but getting them to bite is a different story. Be careful out there as the ice frost weird this year.
 

sierra1995

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I remember a long time ago fishing on the SE side of mallard island, drove out because the ice was well over 2' thick. Got to the spot we wanted, drilled 4 holes in a 20' square, ice varied from 5" to 24". The truck was pretty close to the thin stuff. Haven't been back in there since.
 

scrotcaster

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I also was driving my jeep on the ice on the SE side of mallard Island,,, Thought the ice looked a little funny in one spot, sure enough open water in a spot the size of a swimming pool.. went right back to shore and called it a day,..,, be careful out there
 

Lungdeflator

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Thanks guys. Kind of what I thought, structure seems too good for it to not have anybody fishing, figured there had to be a reason.
Plans changed so I'll have to put off the scouting mission for a few weeks.
 


ice head

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I fish the east end a lot, the last couple of winters have been really tough. Too many smelt, very annoying on the vex screen. I think the majority of the eyes moved to the west end.
 

Lungdeflator

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Well we got out on Sak on Saturday. It was cold and a bit windy.

We got on at the totten landing just west of the pump station. Had to park right off the highway and ATV the rest of the way, the trail was blown in with deep snow. Once on the lake, there were some deeper 10-12" drifts here and there but a truck would've been OK. All the ice we measured was 18-20", nice solid clear ice.

We started on a point on the other side of the intake channel to the pump station. Cutting a spear hole, the gears in my auger blew up on the 4th hole. Luckily we had decided to bring my buddies ION along just in case something dumb happened like that. We got setup and sat from 9-12. Saw 3 nice walleye right away, then some tullibee/whitefish, only pike we saw was a smaller one chasing the tullies. We caught 5 tullies on small jigs with minnow heads. Kept them for lake trout bait.

After that we moved across the channel and sat over a spearhole from 1230-2. Water was more clear, but we didn't see any fish.

Packed up and headed out to the sunken island area, called the 7 sisters I think. The battery was getting low on the ION so we didn't get to scout spots like I wanted to. One hole we drilled up on top of one of the humps showed a nice big stump/tree in 10fow. Surrounding areas looked to be just sand/mud bottom. We were only able to get 2 holes drilled on a saddle in between 2 of the humps before the battery died, so that is where we settled for the evening. Caught 2 small perch, 2 nice eater walleye. Saw one other walleye and some perch on the camera.

I'd like to take another look at that area, spend more time drilling holes and scouting with the camera. That area from what we saw was about 7fow lower than what the Navionics phone app said.

Sidenote, I took the strikemaster apart yesterday and ordered the neccessary parts from DROCK ice center. About 75$, plus I added in some other things that might be handy to have "just in case" so 100$ total.
 

roosterfish

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that area used to be very good until the smelt explosion for me. Now as others have noted very tough to compete with all the smelt ,perch and other food available. also a Ton of Cats!!!
 

ice head

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Thanks for the report, I saw you out there Saturday, I fished the Audubon side, caught a bunch of smaller eyes.
 


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