I believe the year was 2002. I had just made the 6 1/2 hour drive home from Moorhead for my college Thanksgiving break. This Thanksgiving break was different, as it had been extra cold early on and the word was the big lake (Lake Sakakawea) had ice and possibly enough to get out on. I told my good friend, Scott, I would swing by Scenic Sports (local bait shop) and try to get some kind of ice and fishing report. At Scenic, I was given a second hand report that some people were out in the last day or 2 and found 3 1/2-4” of ice or so in a few areas, but no fishing report of any kind. That was music to my ears, I called Scott and we were both thinking the same thing, early ice walleyes and that we would make our own report. I would see my family briefly, but the plan was to head out that night. We couldn’t wait until the next day. We would most likely fish as late as we wanted and then sleep in my car and come back the next morning. I mean, who wouldn’t want to go sleep in a beautiful silver Ford Escort ZX2 in sub zero temps!
When I picked up Scott, his Dad, Jim, said he hoped we not only caught some walleyes, but that we would bring some back for him. He even motioned to rub the top of my head and many times would joke that I’m “lucky” when it came to catching walleyes and big ones. We told him if we caught any, we would. So we grabbed a case of beer, our coveralls and warm stuff, ice fishing gear, minnows and we were off. We planned to fish a particular area called “Red Mike” that was located on the near far West end of Lake Sakakawea only about 25 miles or so from Williston. It’s a couple mile stretch of land that’s all sand and basically a big shallow flat. It’s got a dirt road that goes parallel with the lake, near a big cliff that leads down to the water. In the summer we could actually drive down to the beach in spots, fish, swim, camp, etc., but since it was winter, we would just park somewhere up top and then walk down with our gear.
The one issue was we had gotten about 8-10” of snow about a week ago, so we made sure to have a shovel as we nearly always did. Fortunately, the major cold spell started immediately after the big snow and it had been mostly in single digits or slightly below zero for 4-5 days straight. So we weren’t really worried about the snow on the ice, just potential snow drifts from the wind. Still we weren’t really concerned about it, my car was light and we’ve taken it through a decent amount of snow before. On the 25 minute drive or so, we did some catching up, but really just fantasized about the prospect of early ice walleyes. At this point, it was already 6-7pm and after dark. That’s another thing we couldn’t stop yapping about was how there can be legendary early ice bites after dark and often times up shallow, in 5-7’ of water. In the Red Mike area, we knew no matter how far you walked out, 6-8’ of water was all the deeper it was going to get.
We pulled off the highway and started working our way down the initial part of the dirt road that goes parallel to the lake and leads to Red Mike. We were just around the corner from Lunds Landing, nowhere near where we wanted to fish and were already running into problems with snow drifts. After plowing through a couple, I would try to gain speed in between, but on the 3rd or 4th one, I got bogged down, was high centered and stuck. We got out, assessed the situation and both came to the same conclusion. Even though we weren’t really where we wanted to be, we figured we were close enough, would fish here, and shovel our way out in the morning.
The first thing we did was take our ice chisel or “pick”, a scoop, and a tip up down to the lake to check the ice thickness. We gave the ice a good hard whack and our chisel didn’t go through, already a good sign, sweet. We walked out a little further and continued and same thing, it’s going well. Now keep in mind, near shore there’s only a foot or two of water here, but we picked out a hole and it was around 4” or so. So it’s possible it will get thinner, the further out we go. We continued this process until we made it out from shore about a 1/4 mile or so and still found around 4” of solid clear ice. At our current weights back then, 2” would have held us, so we felt confident with anything over 3-3 1/2 “. We dropped the treble hook from the tip up down with a depth bomb to check the depth and had about 5’ or so of water under the ice. So we quickly scampered back up to my car to grab the rest of our gear, which was basically a couple buckets with tip ups and a bucket full of minnows (fatheads). Our method this night and which was typical back then was to use tip ups, specifically polar tip ups. These are basically set lines and the opposite of jigging and you hand line the fish in, instead of using a fishing rod. They work well in colder conditions. In ND, it’s 4 lines per person, so I picked out 8 holes in a row, spacing them out quite a bit, maybe 30 or so yards in between each one. Since we were on a big expansive flat, we wanted as big of a spread as possible. It took us a while, but we got all 8 lines in, setting our lines 5-10” off the bottom. It was a simple setup that involved 2-3 fathead minnows on a small treble hook with a split shot about a foot away. The shallowest hole was around 5’ and deepest maybe 7’.
The order in which we put the lines in, was we started at the deepest hole and finished setting up our last one at our shallowest hole. Immediately after we got our 8th one in, we were each thinking the same thing, let’s walk back and check them all to see if any flags are up yet. In reality, odds were nothing would be up yet, but still we wanted to take a look. We didn’t have a spot light, just headlights on our foreheads, so the only way to ever know if any were up would be to wander close enough to them. By the time we got to about the 4th tip up, we had a flag up and it was one of mine. When we saw the orange flag in the air, we were ecstatic, but whispering quietly with excitement, like if we talked any louder the fish could hear us. We were thinking how amazing this would be if it were a walleye and who knows, maybe even a nice one, but we both knew deep down that it could just be a “shiner”, which is a mooneye and really just a bait stealer and hard to catch on tip ups. They are notorious for tripping your tip up, ripping the guts out of your minnows, and disappearing before you ever get a hook in one. They can be very prevalent ice fishing on Sakakawea and are basically viewed as a nuisance. As far as the fish hearing you, there is some truth to that. With early thin ice like this, you do want to walk quietly so the fish don’t hear you and we did, slowly making our way over to the tip up. Now for anyone who doesn’t know how a polar tip up works, there is a metal T bar at the top and when the fish is taking line, it will spin. So it’s always a great sign if you can see it spin at all on the walk over to it. We didn’t see it spin at all, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a fish isn’t still on as it could have tripped the tip up, made the flag go up, swam a few feet, and then just be sitting there having a gourmet dinner of fathead minnows.
As I lifted the tip up out of the hole, I didn’t see the split shot (a marker that we put on the line near the spool) and the line was heading sideways out of the bottom of the hole, both good signs. I took some line out of the spool as I lifted the tip up out, basically giving it a little slack, so if there was a fish there, it didn’t feel me tugging at all. Then I started very slowly pulling the line in, hoping and waiting to feel any tension from the fish. Basically, I want to feel the fish before the fish feels me. After I pulled up about 5’ of line or so, I felt some tension and then the slightest tug and I set the hook. I gave a quick snap with my hand of about a 10” or so and there was a fish there and it felt pretty good. Both Scott and I were dying to know what it was and with the shallow water, it didn’t take long and we saw her gold eyes glowing below the hole with our headlights and we knew it was a walleye. After a brief fight below the hole, we had it top side and it was about a 3 pound walleye or maybe 20” or so.
At this point, we were over the moon. It seemed everything we were fantasizing about in the car about shallow, early ice, after dark walleyes might be coming true or was it just a fluke? We knew we needed to pick out another hole to put a stringer in with the fish, but first we wanted to check the rest of the lines. 3 tip ups later and now one of Scott’s was up and same thing, he catches another 3 pounder. Oh man, it’s happening. We quickly rebait, finally make it to our 8th and last tip up and it’s up too! Another 3 pounder! We got a hole picked and have already got 3 nice walleyes on our chain stringer. This theme would continue for several hours and throughout the night. We would go up to my car, warm up for a bit, head back down, catch a couple more, drink a beer or two, and repeat. At some point late in the night, we each got a couple hours of sleep.
Fortunately, we had brought a couple stringers. By the time we left the next morning after the sun came up, we were basically out of minnows, but by this point had our 20 fish possession limit for both days. They were all 2 1/2-4 pound walleyes, every single one of them. Looking back on it now, most were a little bigger than my liking for keeping. We even got lucky with the car, it wasn’t even high centered. We hardly shoveled and had it out within 5 minutes. On the 30 minute drive home, we knew we had one of those legendary nights of fishing we would never forget. There’s something special about early ice, being the only ones out there, and slamming aggressive shallow water walleyes with one of your best friends. When I dropped Scott off the next morning and Jim looked at our fish, his jaw dropped and he smiled from ear to ear. He was so happy he could have cried. When we held the fish up for a picture, one of my chain stringers couldn’t take it anymore and a few of the clips broke off. The picture seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle of life, but I saved the broken clips and I’m glad I did. My good friend Scott hasn’t been with us for some time now, but he was my favorite fishing buddy and this is one of my all time favorite fishing memories with him.
RIP Scott!
Marcus Lynch
Lucky Lynch’s Guide Service