Finding high percentage fishing spots at home. Author Josh Olson On January 14, 2016

Home map research pays off

Last weekend was South Dakotas Largest fishing tournament of the year. It brought 1050 ice anglers to Lake Oahe. With the tournament being near the holidays and having a baby in late fall I wasn't going to be able to prepare for this tournament on the water. Instead I broke down Doctor Sonar map card at home on my Lowrance fish finder. The detail of the map enabled me to narrow down my target area to only a handful of what I felt was high percentage spots. I found one area that had 3 high percentage spots within close proximity of each other so I decided that's where we were going to go tournament day. This was going to be a put all your eggs in one basket strategy due to the location and poor ice conditions.

When we arrived at the location one spot was already taken so we went to the 2nd spot on the list. It was Main lake point next to deep water with a nice deep ledge and feeding shelf. We decided the best way to attack this spot was to get into position with the Lowrance GPS and Docs map card. We then wanted to cover all depths of the point edge so we could find what depth the fish were in. This is critical. We spread lines from 15-55 ft. It didn't take long and the deep tip up got bit. Within 2 hours we had moved the shack and all of our gear out super deep. Once we got the depth right, the point and shelf just funneled the migration of fish right past us. In a short 5 hours of fishing we had caught around 40 walleyes. 5 of those walleyes being weighable fish. We were happy with that because it was our first time ever ice fishing Lake Oahe.

We ended up finishing 19th out of 525 teams. We considered that a great success since we relied purely on our Map Card and a theory. So next time you are thinking about hitting the hard water take your GPS with you and do a little homework. You may surprise yourself on how quick you can put a pattern together.