Ballard's - Lake of the Woods, Minnesota

Hit and or miss…

Hello sportfans.  And welcome to the weekly dart here on Minnesota’s Lake of the Woods.  We are blasting our way through February.  And like a neighbor said this morning:  “it’s getting to feel more like spring”.  I guess he was refering to the overwhelming snow base that we have on the ground and the balmy high temp today of +21 degrees.  Is that “spring-like” weather for us?  Yes.  For the most part.

Now on to the fishing!  What’s going on?  That was the million dollar question over this past weekend.  We had high expectations going into the Friday / Saturday bite.  And then someone quickly let the air out of our balloon.

The bite at Knight dropped to smaller saugers.  And the run at Garden produced less than spectacular numbers of green-backs (walleye).  Ouch.  Time for the guides to scramble.

In the big picture…  We are still catching fish.  We always do.  But from a winter fishing guide’s perspective the group numbers have been less than admiral by our standards.

Hit and miss really sums up the latest action.  From day to day the house selection seems to be sporatic.  One shack will “get ‘em”...  And the next hut down the line won’t.

Consistency is always our goal, whether it be trophy fish or simply fish put in the pail.  Hopefully that’s were we will be in the very near future.

As we speak…  Our guides are once again busy doing the fish house shuffle.

About 1/2 the fleet sits west of Knight, and the balance rests further north on east Garden.

Again…  It’s somewhat of a coin toss as to which location will be best on any given day.  Some days we do better at Knight.  And the opposite may be true for Garden.

For the time being all we can do is keep moving and keep fishing.  Getting the numbers game back in line is certainly a priority.

Until next time…  Bring your vexi…

And set the hook!