Chris Schafer and his son Karson were in an ice fishing shanty late in the day on December 29. They were 30 minutes by snow machine from shore, on deep solid ice on sprawling Lake-of-the-Woods in far northern Minnesota near the Canadian border.
“We saw a bigger than average blip on my Garmin LiveScope that was scanning below our ice shanty,” Chris tells Wired2fish. “We first saw it about 2:30 p.m., but the fish wouldn’t bite, then disappeared.
“But about 4 p.m. the blip came back. It was right on a mud bottom in 29 feet of water, well below my lure. I dropped my lure a little, wiggled it, dropped it again a bit, wiggled it – and the fish charged my lure and ate it.”
Chris figured it was a big walleye because of how hard it fought. His son Karson watched the fish on the Garmin as Chris fought it with ice spinning gear spooled with 10-pound test braided line. Karson told his dad the fish stayed stubbornly deep while Chris leaned into it.
“I told Karson it was a big one as soon as I hooked it, and told him to be ready when I got it up to our ice hole,” said Chris, a 47-year-old heavy equipment operator from Fargo, North Dakota. “It took about 10 minutes to finally get it up, and I confirmed that it was a big walleye.”
The fish swam under the ice hole, and when its head was visible, Chris raised the fish up and grabbed it by the head. He quickly pulled it up and out, and he and his son were stunned at its size.
“It was the best walleye I ever caught, much bigger than the ones we’d been catching,” he explained.
Minnesota has a slot limit on walleyes, whereby only one fish over 28 inches may be kept. Chris’ heavy walleye measured 30.5-inches, and a trusted hand scale he had showed the fish at 12 pounds.
“I wanted to release it, but it’s the biggest walleye I’ve ever caught, and likely will never catch another one larger,” he said. “So, I kept it to have a skin mount made of the fish to hang on my wall.”
Chris said he and Karson and others in their fishing group had been getting daily limit catches of slot-size walleyes and saugers through the ice. He found the fish they kept were full of freshwater shrimp when he cleaned them.
The lure he used to catch his 12-pounder was a perch-colored LiveTarget double-hook ice fishing lure.
“I’ve been ice fishing on Lake-of-the-Woods for eight years, and we always seem to catch fish,” Chris said. “I’m so busy in the summer that I can’t get time to fish the lake when it’s open water. But I’m not complaining.”
