Winnipeg trip report

[Andrew Erickson]

I don't post much in the walleye forum but I figured you guys and gals would like this and I have to share seeing as how I stuck my biggest walleye to date!

Friday March 14th- we loaded up the trucks and got the sleds all ready to go. We would leave the cities early the next morning with high anticipation of searching out some big greenbacks!

Saturday March 15th- We made it to Winnipeg around 5:30pm and spent the next 2 hours trying to find a fishing license. After going to a couple different gas stations, a Walmart, and spending time in a Mcdonalds using their wifi, we finally found a license at a Canadian tire.

Sunday March 16th- We loaded up our gear from out hotel in downtown Winnipeg and headed for the lake. We were meeting our guide Lee Nolden at 6:30 am. We made it to the landing just before day break and it was COLD. It was -20 when we were getting our gear together. We went out of Chalet beach. It was tough fishing for our group the first day. A big front was projected to come through around noon so we didn't venture out to far. It didn't come through til about 4pm so when we were packing up, we had to deal with high winds and snow. We only ended up catching about 20 fish on day 1 with 27" being the biggest. Other than that lots of dinks.

Monday March 17th- We woke up to cloudy skies but much nicer temps. The high was suppose to get up to 30 so that felt like a heat wave compared to the previous day! We ran out about 8 miles and immediately were on fish. Between 6 guys we caught around 175 fish with 26" being the biggest. Most fish averaged anywhere from 18"-22" with a few nicer fish being caught. Lots of nice eaters were hitting the ice. My hot bait for the day was a pink/white glow blade bait from B fish N tackle. Other guys from my group were getting nice fish on the live targets. We were fishing anywhere from 5-10 feet with the shallowest fish coming from 2 feet of water. Lee is a hell of a guide and we were on fish the whole day. I highly recommend him if anyone is on the fence about hiring a guide up there. It helped a ton. Here is an action shot of me fighting a fish from day 2.

Tuesday March 18th- This was our last day to fish and we were on our own. We elected to fish a different spot on the lake so we went to "the mouth", where the river flows into Lake Winnipeg. We heard there were some nicer fish being caught and we still hadn't caught a giant. Our first spot my buddies dad popped a super nice 26" on a gold rippin rap. It was pretty uneventful after that so we moved about 250 yards away and set up shop in some deeper water. Right away we were marking fish and another 26" was caught on a live target. That fish was an absolute chunker, when she came up I figured she was all of 28" but came up a hair short. 20 minutes had passed and I was up to bat. I was working my blade bait a couple feet off the bottom when all of a sudden a HUGE red mark appeared on the vex. It was so big that I honestly thought it was some sort of interference, until it started following my bait. I held the bait still and felt a bump and hammered the hook set home. My 36" Medium Heavy doubled over. It never made any big runs, instead it was just dead weight coming up. Her head came through the slush and I could not believe what I was looking at. She was the biggest walleye I had ever seen, let alone laid eyes on. I got her unpinned and snapped a few pics and slid her back down the hole. Looking back, I'm kind of kicking myself for not getting a girth measurement. Here she is guys and gals, 30" of pure muscle!

Other big fish to mention- a 28" and a 27.5" were caught and those were a couple PB's for those guys so that was awesome!

My goal going into this trip was to crack the 30" mark and I'm extremely thankful to have gotten it done. Winnipeg is a truly amazing lake and if you have the chance to go, do it. It was an awesome trip and I can't wait to head back for march madness next year!

[Meat-Run]

Nice report Andrew can you share with us what length extension you needed would typical 11-12" extension work or do you need longer ones?

thx

Meat Run

[Andrew Erickson]

we had 20" extensions. It was tough with all the snow on the ice. In some spots we couldn't even get all the way through.