Trying a new lake

[Guest]

There is a lake that I have been thinking of trying. It is a 40 acre bowl with a max depth of 20 feet. It is twice as long as it is wide. The deepest hole is on the south side with pretty good breaks to the east and west, other wise it is very blah. It is tied to a lake accross the road via culvert that is also a bowl with a max depth of 60 feet.

We fished for notherns durning the summer a couple of years ago and had really good luck. They hit all over the lake. But the water level was low and very difficult to get a boat in and out with no 'public' landing.

Last winter my dad got some northerns early and I know of another guy that had luck spearing. I then asked my dad about it and he said the lake 'froze out'. I have not tried it since, and have seen anybody fishing the lake. It has a 20 year old lake survey that had good crappie populations.

My question is do lakes really freeze out? How bad is the fish kill? Will the attached lake repopulate this lake?

I will probably be trying this lake on Friday, and was hoping on hitting northerns, but was also going to try the crappies. I was just wondering if it is a waste of time or not.

[Gissert]

Lakes can and do freeze out. Northerns handle low oxygen levels better that fish like walleyes.

Sometimes, the word gets out that a lake has encountered a winter kill, and then nobody fishes it.

The first guy that goes and fishes these lakes is sometimes pleasantly surprised.