Ice Fishing 2024 Predictions

Ice Fishing 2024 Predictions

By Rod Woten

As I sit here at my keyboard, the Dakotas are getting their first snowfall of the ‘24-25 season. Local temperatures have dropped from the seventies to the 50’s and overnight temps will be teasing the freezing mark. If this is truly the arrival of winter, then it has been a very short and wet fall. Needless to say, my predictions for the 2024/2025 ice fishing season will probably be ones that all ice anglers are going to like.

The Weather
So far, so good is the attitude I’m going to take with the weather outlook for this winter. If this current cold snap is truly the leading edge of winter, then we should be in for an early freeze-up. That’s definitely a good thing because an early freeze-up means a long ice fishing season, even if we have ice-out around our usual time or slightly earlier. Even if the current cold snap is followed by some warmer weather, the projected short-term forecast suggests that it will be cold long enough to drastically drop water temperatures. As long as water temperatures stay low, ice up will happen very quickly once the cold settles in to stay.

Most of the long-range forecasts I’ve seen are calling for a mild early December with several injections of arctic air to follow after that. It also is looking like there is a pretty good chance that it will be a slightly above average year for snow in our great state. That seems like mostly good news, but snow can be a double-edged sword when it comes to ice fishing. Snow before the lakes lock up is a good thing because it helps to lower water temperatures even further and helps keep daytime air temperatures down as well. Snow during the ice-up is probably the worst-case scenario. Even a moderate amount of snow on a thin layer of newly formed ice will sink the ice, flooding the surface of it and mixing with the snow to form completely un-navigable sea of slush. It takes a loooong time for this slush to firm up enough to be considered walkable or fishable, which pushes our first days on ice much closer to ice out. Even once there is enough ice to support fishing traffic, enough wet and heavy snow can sink the ice sheet, forcing water up through every crack and hole resulting in a slushy mess that traps snowmobiles and can last right up to ice out if there isn’t sufficient super-cold weather afterwards to freeze the slush solid.

The Lakes
There are several lakes that I’m very excited about fishing this coming ice fishing season. At the top of my list almost every year is West Okoboji. Okoboji’s “gin-clear” waters allowed me to hone a razor’s edge on my ice fishing skills. These legendary clear waters allow you to observe real time interactions between the fish and your jig and those are the kinds of lessons that you can’t get any other way. Unfortunately, for the past several winters, Okoboji’s waters have been more murky than clear. If you can get out on some of the earliest fishable ice at Okoboji, there’s a good chance that you can still take advantage of those clear waters to sight fish. The last several years, however, have seen that clear water become stained or cloudy shortly after the start of the new year. For the past several season I have held out hope that next season the clear waters would return, but the failure for that to happen for many years in a row has caused me to abandon that hope. I have gradually come to accept that cloudy water on West Okoboji in the winter has become the new normal. Do not despair, however. The water may be cloudy, but the fish are still there. The bluegill bite on West Okoboji for the past couple years has been pretty solid and the quality of the fish has noticeably improved. Based on what I’m hearing this past summer, this winter could be one of the best in a while for big Okoboji bluegills. That fact alone keeps West Okoboji at the top of my list of lakes I can’t wait to fish through the ice this winter.

Clear Lake has been one of the biggest success stories in recent history as far as lake recoveries are concerned. The efforts there to improve water quality are certainly paying dividends. Weed growth has firmly re-established itself and the success of panfish spawns are the benefactors. A few years ago it was unheard of to catch crappies from Clear Lake in any quantity or quality to even be worth the effort. Fast forward a few years and now decent catches of quality crappies are now becoming the norm. More recently the perch population has started to follow the same trend. I shiver when I consider the possibility that Clear Lake could become a destination lake in Iowa for decent stringers of jumbo perch! As if that wasn’t enough, Clear Lake’s famous population of yellow bass is still there and thriving. They might not be quite as plentiful as five years ago, but there are still plenty of them to go around. The bonus is that the average size of yellow bass in Clear Lake is up…WAY up! In fact, if you can’t catch an Iowa “Master Angler” qualifying yellow bass in Clear Lake, then you’re doing something very wrong. Add to that the chance to tie into a keeper-sized walleye, catfish, muskie or feisty white bass and it’s easy to see why I predict great things for Clear Lake this winter.

A few years ago, whenever I talked about Big Creek and ice fishing it was as it related to panfish…mostly crappies and bluegills. For the past several years, however, crappie fishing has definitely been down at Big Creek, and depending on the year, those big bluegills can be pretty tough to pin down as well. In light of all of that, I think it’s time to start getting excited about the walleye fishing at Big Creek for the coming winter. For many years, it seems like all you could catch were cigar-sized walleyes. That has been slowly changing over the years however, as those little walleyes grow. For this reason, I feel the walleye fishing at Big Creek this winter could be its best yet. Add to that, the fact that I feel the crappies populations have turned a corner and I think it will definitely be worth punching some holes through the ice on Big Creek this winter.

Badger Creek seems poised to take Big Creek’s crown as Des Moines’ king of panfish. I was pretty impressed with the quality of the crappie and bluegill that I caught from there last year and I predict that this winter will only get better. At the very least, Badger will be as good as it has been the past couple of winters….and that’s pretty good. I expect, however, that Badger will step it up a level this year.

One other lake I’m expecting big things from this winter is Crystal Lake. A handful of years ago, Crystal Lake was one of the hottest panfish lakes in the state. That all came crashing down though when it suffered a pretty major winter-kill. From all reports, Crystal was already on the rebound last winter. This winter should put Crystal right in the sweet spot that all lakes experience several years after a major kill. Forage levels are on a steady increase due to the reduced pressure that accompanies a major reduction. This means there is plenty of high-protein food for the recovering fish populations to eat. Eventually things will reach a point where the forage base has been eaten back to a more normal level, but for the 2 or 3 years when forage is so high, the quality and quantity of fish being caught can be off the charts. I predict that this winter Crystal Lake anglers will start to cash in on this exact situation.

Don’t Forget The Gear
I see three gear trends that will continue this winter season as well. While these trends are not new, by any means, but I don’t predict that they will fizzle any time soon. In fact, I only see them gaining steam for the foreseeable future.

Custom ice rods are definitely all the rage right now. It seems like everyone and their brother is building them, and every ice angler owns at least a couple from their favorite builder. Some of the rods are great, some are not that much different than what you can buy off the shelf and some are not that great. At any rate, this is a trend that won’t be going away anytime soon, and I expect it to really explode this winter.

Electric augers are the second trend I see exploding this season. Again, this is nothing new; electric augers have been around for years. But now they have become a highly attractive and viable option. Many manufacturers have electric auger options that perform at or above the level of a gas auger. When you factor in the fact that most are lighter than a gas auger and don’t require mixing fuel and eliminate the issues with leaking gas and gas odors, it’s no wonder the ice anglers are making the switch. In my opinion the only other type of auger that even comes close to competing with electric auger are propane, but the electric units still have more advantages. I predict that this winter even more anglers will make the switch to electric. I also think this will continue for the foreseeable future until gas augers make up only a small part of the market.

Tungsten almost completely dominates the ice jig market now. So much so, that it’s hard to find a decent selection of lead ice jigs anymore. Trust me, I’m not complaining; I’m as big a fan of tungsten as anyone. The unfortunate part is that it’s getting harder every year for all those tungsten holdouts to re-stock their jig boxes with lead. That’s why I predict that many lead aficionados will be making the jump this year.

Bottom Line
All in all, I think it should be a pretty decent ice fishing season for the winter of 2024/25. The weather is already looking favorable, so I expect a fairly early start for most of the state. I also believe there are several lakes that are poised to be very good this winter. Hopefully by the time you’re reading this we will be very near or even to the point in time when we can put my predictions to the test. I sure hope I’m right.