February 9


Central Minnesota Ice Fishing

Corn Belt Outdoors got out for a weekend of ice fishing on a Central Minnesota private lake north of Brainerd. The recent warm weather and rain made the ice conditions less than ideal.  We were sitting on approximately 2 inches of water/slush over 14-18 inches of ice.  

The goal was to try to and find the elusive crappies in the lake. It is quite the crappie fishery, especially in the summer.  We had read in other blogs that we were going to find them in the deepest part of the lake and they would be suspended up from the bottom. Sadly we failed in our quest to find them.  The bluegill did cooperate and we were able to get into some in approximately 28 feet of water. The structure of the lake was a transition from sandy to weedy bottom. The conditions were perfect to try our Marcum Recon5 underwater camera.

The Recon5 was great, my only complaint about the product was with the smaller thickness of cord it is hard to get camera to stay still.  It tended to drift and spin slowly.  We got some great small perch images on the cam and were fortunate enough to watch a 30 inch Northern Pike take our bait.

Overall a great weekend, we caught enough fish for a fish fry and we got to test out one of Marcum’s great products.  We are hopeful that our next trip out to find crappie yields some better results.

CN