North Sand Lake

[mistadobalina]

Hey there guys and gals. I'll be heading up to my cabin on Sand Lake tonight, was wondering if anyone has been out on the ice this year and could shed some light on the fishing situation? I know there is more than 1 Sand Lake in Wisconsin, I'm speaking of the one located east of Webster off of County Rd. A, near Voyager Village.

If no one has anything to share, I will be coming back Sunday for the Superbowl and gladly provide you with my experience.

Cheers!

-Jeremy

[mistadobalina]

Well, I must say I picked the perfect weekend to go fishing. Beautiful weather, met some real nice people, and overall had a great time.

For starters, let me clarify which lake I am speaking of. It's Sand Lake located in Burnett county. I believe it is technically considered Jackson, but it might be considered Webster. This lake supposedly has walleye, large-mouth bass, and pike. Here's the survey map I found on the DNR HSOforum.

http://dnr.wi.gov/lakes/maps/DNR/2495100a.pdf

My cabin is located on the south-east end of the lake (second picture), literally on the peninsula south of the "mixed hardwood & pine". I didn't want to fish terribly far away from the cabin, so we started drilling holes around the sand bar about 800 feet away from our shoreline. If you look at the second picture in the link I have provided, we were fishing in the area where it rapidly drops from 10 feet to 40 feet just west of the "mixed hardwood & pine" located on the map. We drilled about 5 holes until a suitable depth was found (we decided on 20 feet). There is a reason this lake has its name, the bottom is quite literally sand no matter where you go. We drilled a hole in which we could see the bottom crystal clear at 15 feet deep, which I think is pretty incredibly clean.

Anyway, we setup a couple tip-ups, one at 30 feet, one at about 20 feet and another at 15 feet. Didn't get a single catch from these tip-ups in the 24 hours of fishing. This was disappointing, but the fishing we did in our shack wasn't as bad. We caught quite a few rock bass within the first couple of hours (9 inches was the largest we caught, smallest was 7 inches) but never got anything beyond that. I spoke with a couple other fishermen on the lake, and they all said pretty much the same thing - it's a very difficult lake to fish, especially in the winter. My neighbor caught a decent sized walleye, but I had no such luck.

Although I wasn't as successful as I had hoped, I still had a fun time and I plan on doing the same thing next weekend until the season closes. So expect more updates on this post, hopefully with better luck as time progresses.

Cheers!

-Jeremy

[DonBo]

Nice report, thanks for taking the time. Hopefully you'll get 'em figured out before the season's over.

[Jarrid Houston]

thanks for the report, and look forward to more. Gd luck next weekend!!

[rookie44]

our uncle has a place on that lake. it is on the nw side a couple places n of the boat launch. I have never ice fished there but do decent on crappies all year. It is a beautiful lake. It is tough to fish.