Ice fishing Lake Mille Lacs: The fire still burns

WAHKON, MINN.

Eddy Lyback has been catering to winter anglers on Lake Mille Lacs since he was 8, when he drove his dad's 1946 Willys Jeep around the lake supplying firewood to the family's rental ice fishing shacks.

"My job after school was to split the wood and stack it under the bunks," he said. "We used wood stoves in the ice houses until LP gas came on the scene."

Lyback was on the lake this week -- as he is virtually every day during the winter -- driving his 1966 blue Ford pickup with the big red V-shaped plow that he uses to clear roads on the lake for his customers. The 45-year-old truck has 100,000 miles on the odometer -- all tallied plowing roads and pulling shacks on a frozen Mille Lacs.

The Lyback name is a familiar one here.

"I grew up on the lake, my father was born on the property and my grandfather homesteaded it," Lyback said Monday while jigging a minnow through a hole in the ice inside one of his heated rental houses, complete with bunks, biffy and a stove.

He and I drove out to fish for a few hours.

Those 25 rental houses don't just stay in one place. "We move half every week to keep them on the fish," he said.

His parents started the business in 1954, charging a 25-cent access fee and $2 per fishing hole for 12 hours in a wooden fishing shack. Now ice house rental ranges from $70 for 12 hours to $450 for a weekend.

Weather wilts season

But the unseasonably warm winter has shortened the winter angling season. There was open water on the lake earlier in January, and ice conditions were poor. More than 30 anglers were rescued Dec. 21 after a huge sheet of ice broke free from shore. Conditions have improved greatly since then.

"We've got 21 or 22 inches of ice here," Lyback said. "Normally we'd have 30 inches now."

"I'd say our rental income is down 30 to 35 percent," he said.

More houses are sprouting up on the lake now, but it's already February, and permanent unoccupied houses have to be off Mille Lacs by March 5 -- meaning an awfully short season on Minnesota's most popular walleye lake.

"The number of ice fishing houses at the first of the year was substantially lower than we've ever seen," said Rick Bruesewitz, Department of Natural Resources area fisheries supervisor. "Normally we might have 3,000 to 4,000 by then, and we only had a few hundred."

Because of the reduced fishing pressure, winter walleye harvest likely will be lower than expected

"Typically most of the harvest occurs in December and early January," Bruesewitz said.

Biting ... or not

Lyback and I impaled minnows on small lures and jigged. We also set out two lines on rattle reels.

By most accounts, the walleye fishing has been good, for those who have gotten out on the lake.

"I've seen more 31-inch walleyes than I have seen in 10 years," Lyback said.

But this day the fish weren't biting. After four hours, we caught only a 10-inch perch and an 11-inch walleye before heading for shore at dusk.

He told us what we already suspected: "It was a tough day today," he said. In four hours, he had seen only one walleye brought to shore.

"Every now and then it happens," he said. "A lot of anglers said they were seeing fish, but can't make them bite. Sometimes it just goes dead."

And sometimes not.

Last week he surveyed 13 anglers fishing Hunters Point -- and eight had limits of walleyes.

Doug Smith • dsmith@startribune.com