West side lake of the woods weekend report

[Northerndave]

We went out of springsteel resort's access.

 
We set up saturday morning and stayed through the weekend. I pulled a tandem house with a 3/4 ton truck, with a V plow.
 
I'm not saying that was smart or that everybody should do the same, I'm just being honest here. We took springsteel's access, I purchased an annual pass for $150 because I usually stick with that access point for the season. The landing is steep, some wheel houses may scrape frame coming down into the ice. Mine is a 2016 21' ice castle with berkon hyd frame, we did not scrape but it was close.
 
A few hundred yards from shore they have a crack bridged, passage was good on saturday, a few boards were damaged or missing Monday when we came back across to leave.
 
We pulled our house out past the first group of houses which is known as the "sand bar" area. The second group is what they call the DNR reef. I went to the north side of the reef, dropped my house and plowed a road with 5 parking spots  off the end like fingers on an open hand. We set our house in one of the spots and our friends filled in the other 4 spots. We were in 21-22 FOW, good clear ice. We blocked with 2x4 wood blocks laid flat. Holes were 16" to 17" clear ice with tape measure.
 
Water came up to the tops of the holes and crept out a little around the houses, I wouldn't exactly call it flooding (before this shot of snow last night) But some water did seep out onto the ice around the houses.
 
I think all of the wheel houses out there had wheel opening skirts, the guys with the longer skirts that had a flap laying on the ice, they had trouble with the skirts freezing down. Our skirts are a bit shirt from touching the ice (intentionally), we have to bank up to make a seal with them, but they don't typically give problems freezing down.
 
As for fishing, we had chubs and live shiners. We were surprised to see shiners at north country convenience store just west of warroad. I'm not sure that either the shiners or chubs won out, but we had and used both.  Fishing was slow, that's all there is to it. We did manage a decent fish fry Sunday night but it was a lot of dead bobbers and failed attempts to get the marks to bite.
 
  We had a couple of cameras along, they aren't great on lake of the woods as most folks know, the water isn't clear enough. But we were able to see an absolute infestation of fresh water shrimp at the bottom. I'm not saying that was the reason for the slow fishing, but it likely contributed, along with the unstable weather. Fish we cleaned were full of shrimp and my live well in my house had a lot of shrimp in the bottom that had come out of fish we had in the live well.
 
The springsteel ice road did go past the DNR reef but they did not make it all the way up to south tip. They hit a crack about half way between DNR and south tip and were forced to stop there. There was a group of houses at the end of the road, quite a few were springsteel rentals.
 
We pulled off the lake before the snow hit yesterday. I am in Badger MN and I had about a foot of snow to plow at home this morning. I'm not sure what the lake got but I would guess similar to what I got at home here. We will have to wait for resort reports to know for sure I guess.
 

Springsteel did post on their facebook page today that they were not plowing the ice road today, too hard to keep ahead of the blowing. They plan on hitting it again in the morning (Wed the 4th).
 

[lovebigbluegills]

Great report dave, thank you

[Boar]

yup good stuff, thanks dave!

[Northerndave]

boar, did your wheel skirts freeze down? mine didnt, Gren's did some, the big bite skirts froze down bad.

[Gunner55]

I haven't fished LOW in a long time but was still interested in your report ND. Lots of good info,ND, keep it up.