I’m on the 18th tee box for the winter ice fishing season. Just need to keep it in the fairway and get up and down to close it out.

Hard to believe it’s coming to a close already. Goes fast and I’m already getting excited for the open water season to begin. Looks like we will be getting that going extremely early this year.

In fact, I’m guessing I’ll be offering some trips on the Missouri River near Bismarck here towards the end of March already. Not really a guess because I have buddies already out chasing open water walleyes back home.

I still have about 8 days left on the frozen stuff up here at Devils Lake. It’s been a winter of quality over quantity that’s for sure. We have had to work our butts off to stay on top of things.

The ice actually is better now up here than it was all winter. The fishing has been ok. Not great but if you work for them and stay on it you’ll do ok. I would anticipate it getting really good about the time I wrap up and head back to Bismarck.

Small buckshots tipped with minnow heads has been hard to beat all winter long. Any type of structure like points, roads, humps etc seem to be concentrating the majority of fish. I would would think the fish will begin moving shallow here in the next couple of weeks.

Since I’ll be returning to open water here in just over a week I’ll take some early open water guide trips if anyone is interested. Get ahold of me! I have a few openings in April also.