In an interview with Roger Cormier, Devils Lake fishing guide Ancil Reynolds provides his overview of the current Devils Lake fishery, and his expectations for the coming winter season.

MidWest Outdoors: What’s the overall health of the fish populations in Devils Lake right now, and how is the lake set up for the coming ice fishing season in North Dakota?

Ancil Reynolds: Well, let’s start with the walleye fishing, because this open-water season has been excellent. The Game & Fish test nets this past spring were very good, averaging 34 fish “per-pull,” which is high. There were lots of well-represented year classes, from numbers of 8- to 10-inch fish all the way up to the high 20-inch size. The fall bite was good, catching lots of fish on deep rocks jigging, and leadcore trolling along the breaklines in some of the basin areas. I think winter walleyes will be set up in some schools in brush and rock areas, and pretty easy to find and catch, especially early in the ice fishing season. I’m looking forward to a good winter walleye bite!

MWO: What kind of depths should anglers target, at least early in the season, to contact the most walleyes?

Reynolds: We’ll probably start out in depths around ten feet and work all the way out to the mid-20-foot range. This year, walleyes have been caught in these locations all the way back to mid-July. I mean, they haven’t left those areas for months, generally speaking. They have been pretty easy to target, because it’s been such a consistent bite. Most of the fish we are choosing to keep in a day’s fishing are ranging in size from 17 to 21 inches—some good quality fish—but we’re catching them all different sizes from the little ones all the way up to some really big ones. Devils Lake is just a really healthy fishery right now. Ice fishermen can count on catching walleyes in the 14- to 20-inch range this winter.

MWO: What’s the baitfish population looking like right now?

Reynolds: Our baitfish population is really high. There are huge numbers of small white bass, small crappies are showing up in some pretty good numbers, and we’re seeing some small perch in some of the walleyes we’re cleaning, but not an overwhelming number.

MWO: Speaking of perch, what do you anticipate for the winter perch bite on Devils Lake this year? That’s what the fishery is most famous for, even though in recent years the walleyes are running close in second place.

Reynolds: I think after the way summer went, the ice fishing season for perch is going to be very good this year. When you can find schools and catch them in summer, that usually bodes well for winter. We caught some pretty good numbers, and it seems like they are more scattered in good numbers throughout the system right now, versus the past several years when they were only in certain areas and always moving, so sometimes it was hard to stay on the perch bite. The size range seems good for the bulk of the population as well, with lots of fish in that healthy 11- to 13-inch size. They are good quality fish, really fat and healthy because there’s so much bait and, of course, they always have the freshwater shrimp to grub on anytime they want. Plus, it seems like when you locate some perch, there are numbers of them—not just a couple here and there.

MWO: Where should anglers target Devils Lake jumbos when they fish here this winter?

Reynolds: Anglers will find them on the deep rock structure and deep brushpiles where they were stacked up during open water, and of course the deep mud basin is always in play for winter perch on Devils Lake. Key winter depths are 20 to 30 feet at the start of ice fishing season, and as winter progresses, we’ll key in on the deep basin from 30 to 50 feet of water.

MWO: Let’s talk about the white bass and northern pike fishing.

Reynolds: The white bass thing is really coming on strong. We’ve always had good shore fishing for them, and they are becoming more and more popular as an open-water species to target. They run in schools and are fun to catch because they fight so hard. It’s a different deal in the winter, though, because they don’t run in big schools. You’ll catch them anywhere from 3 feet of water all the way out to 50 or 60 feet of water, and anywhere in the water column in that deep basin water, even right under the ice sometimes. We see some really big ones—my biggest this past summer was 3 pounds, 2 ounces. But the most are a pound to a pound-and-a-half range, and when you hook them, they fight like crazy, especially on an ice rod. They are a fun bonus species that we catch in all seasons here on Devils Lake.

MWO: How about the pike population? What’s the health of the species at this time?

Reynolds: The pike fishing this winter is going to be very interesting to see. We caught pike for awhile during open-water season, and then they disappeared for the most part. We searched for them shallow, deep,] and in between and didn’t run into too many numbers of fish. That being said, I’m still pretty optimistic about the upcoming ice fishing season for pike. It’s always the best season to catch them on Devils Lake, if you target them. We have the numbers, but right now it seems like there’s a dominant number of smaller fish at 22 inches or so and down from there. Then we see some decent numbers of pike around 36 inches, but it seems there’s a bit of a gap in between those two size ranges. And of course, we still have some big trophy pike around as well.

MWO: Devils Lake is a great all-around fishery, and generous limits mean anglers can always bring home plenty of fillets. Anglers can keep five walleyes and pike per day, and a total of ten in possession for each species, plus 20 per person daily limits on both perch and white bass, and 40 total of each species in possession. In closing, why should ice anglers choose Devils Lake as a fishing spot this winter?

Reynolds: I believe that when the ice sets up this year in December, it’s going to be a really great year to start with, and then the March fishing should be spectacular as well. That’s based on this past winter, because fishing in March this past year was beyond spectacular. We’ll have the inevitable ups and downs in the dead of winter due to bad cold fronts and such, but overall, this is such a consistent fishery that it’s hard to string together too many tough days. I think this winter is going to be a banner year on Devils Lake!

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