Minnesota, Alexandria Lakes Area, Ice Fishing - Panfish Fishing Report at IDOfishing.com

Late ice is one of the most productive times of the year to be fishing and the Alexandria Lakes area is among the best places in the Midwest to spend that day on the ice. With literally hundreds of lakes to choose from, your options are endless. Whether you’re after eater size or trophy size panfish there’s a lake for you. We still have plenty of ice on the lakes for travel by foot and yet many are still ATV accessible. If you’re wondering what to do this weekend make a drive up. We are only a couple hours up I-94 from the cities and the fish are going hot!

A 1lb 6oz bruiser!

With it being such a beautiful night last night I decided to hit the ice to do a little scouting for this weekend. Typically this time of year the sun starts to shine brighter and the fish become more aggressive. This makes finding the fish relatively easy. Even though fish this time of year can be caught anywhere from a couple FOW to as deep as 25 FOW, you should generally be targeting the 5’ – 7’ range on most lakes. This is exactly what I had planned to do prior to hitting the ice last night. I targeted a couple weed beds that usually stay green well into the winter months. I drilled a series of holes over these beds, zig zaging the contour from 5’-7’ FOW.

I started with a number 8 moon glow and a wax worm. The first few holes only yielded a few small sunfish. The next few were about the same, the only difference was I noticed a few bigger marks on the graph that seemed interested. It appeared that the small sunfish were getting to the bait before the larger ones, so I made a change that’s worked for me in the past. I switched to small Demon jigging spoon by Custom Jigs and Spins, tipped with a Finesse plastics Ratso style tail. This technique will deter the smaller sunfish long enough to give the bigger ones a crack at the bait. It’s a common misconception that when panfish aren’t bitting that you need to go to a smaller bait. Although this is sometimes the case, quite often a bigger presentation will turn em on fire. Mixed in with these sunfish will often be large aggressive crappies, so with this lure you’re set up to target both large sunfish and crappie. In just a few minutes I knew this was the right move because in a short order I was able to ice a bunch of nice sunfish with over a dozen slab crappies mixed in. I hadn’t planned on keeping any but after having a few crappies inhale the jig I decided to keep a few for the pan.

A few for the pan!

I can’t stress enough that this isn’t just me being on the right lake at the right time. There are literally dozens and dozens of lakes that are putting out great fish right now. With some effort a productive day on the ice is almost inevitable. Just this past week I’ve heard reports of fish in the hundreds in just a couple hours of fishing. One friend of mine iced 100 crappies and another iced 200 sunfish with three of those sunfish fish going over a pound; 1lb 4oz and two 1lb 6oz. Please come up and enjoy yourself but keep in mind that whenever fish are vulnerable like this to be respectful of the fishery. Please let the large fish go and only keep what you need for a meal. The old saying, “if I don’t keep em somebody else will” no longer applies. Almost everyone I meet these days are letting large pan fish go to ensure quality fish for the future. There’s no reason to freeze buckets of fish just because you can. It looks like a great weekend; so good luck, be careful and I’m sure you’ll have a great time.

Alexandria MN, Late Ice Panfish Bite

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