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Today, I met up with friend and fellow angler HuyFishin’ from YouTube. He invited me out to Fallis to fish a spot on Wabamun Lake that he knew well. I personally haven’t spent much time on Wabamun, and when I did I usually stuck to the townsite and Provincal Park. This trip was new territory for me.
I was a bit late getting out there as this is the first time I’ve had the ATV out this year and it took me longer to load up. It was around 10:30 am by the time I arrived at the lake. There is a small parking lot about a block from the lake shore where I could park the truck and load my gear. Once the Brute was unloaded I set out towards the lake.
As I approached I found a few ATV and snowmobile tracks to guide me on the lake. There was roughly 10” of ice and another 8” of snow on top. About 300 yards from shore I ran into a surprising problem. Flood water crept up through the ice and was hidden by the snow. Luckily the snow wasn’t heavy yet and I was still able to make it out to meet HuyFishin’ without too much drama.
I haven’t iced fished in ankle deep water before, but since the flood water surrounded us a couple hundred yards in every direction we didn’t have much of a choice.
We started at the top of a gradual drop off from 6 to 20 feet deep. I drilled holes along the slope and tried a few depths but we only began marking fish as soon as we hit the 20 foot mark. In short order I had my first walleye but it was barely a foot long. Using common Candle Lake minnows, my iFish Pro tip-up handily out fished everything else in my tackle box 2-1. Just a few years ago Wabamun was touted as a trophy pike fishery. Today all we managed to catch were tiny walleye. The longest one I estimate was 16”.
Around 3 pm, feet soaking wet, I decided to call it a day. The flood water again made the trip back to the launch interesting. My ATV was completely loaded down with ice and snow and likely added another couple hundred pounds. Once at home, I chipped out the ice and ended up carrying almost five buckets worth out of the garage. Next time I think I will drive around the water features!
