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The Slab Crappies of Lake of the Woods

 Feb 27th, 2015 by OutdoorsFIRST 

Modified Feb 27th, 2015 at 12:00 AM

Lake Of The Woods Slab Crappies

    by Joe Henry
  

We had been looking forward to this trip for a long time.  The three of us, myself, Josh Lantz of MI and Dan Stefanich of IL, were headed ice fishing for some of the potentially largest crappies of our life.  And on this day of ice fishing, the sun, moon and stars came together.

We were guided by Dan Schmidt, a NW Angle guide for more than 30 years.  Schmidt, working out of Sunset Lodge, had some other clients with as well.  We took two vehicles, a bombardier with a permanent fish house towed behind and a Polaris Razr with a collapsible house behind.  After a short drive on the ice from our MN resort, we were in Ontario and in crappie territory.

Our first spot only generated a few crappies and a few saugers.  Eventually Schmidt went on a quick excursion checking on some other spots and upon his arrival back, reported he wanted to move us a bit.  The three groups all fished in different areas, but within sight of each other.

The three of us were fishing about 24 feet of water just off of a rock point in what seemed to be a flat off of the point.  It didn’t take long and we iced our first crappie in this spot.  After punching a number of holes, we started hole hopping, meaning moving from ice hole to ice hole looking for active fish.  The strategy paid off with the three of us catching our 10 crappie limit per person of huge slab crappies up to 15 inches long.

Check out this video from the ice the day we caught the crappies!

If you are interested in experiencing some world class crappie fishing, contact one of Lake of the Woods Northwest Angle resorts at www.LakeoftheWoodsMN.com/Lodging.