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I was there just this weekend. There are no fees to park anywhere. Parking isn’t too big of an issue at the few pull off that there are. The pull off at the dam had been been plowed. Snow was deep and the slush was the worst I have seen it up there. It was hard walking everywhere but that doesn’t mean you can’t go and still have a good time. The fish can be shallow there so you dont have to journey out too far to have success.
My suggestion would be to park at the Madsen Bay lot and walk down the ramp. Walking on and off will easier there and fishing can be just as good there as anywhere else.
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Are there no winter fees to park in the State Parks and enter the Ice from these two locations? If not that is a first.
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There are fees to park at the State Park. Madsen Bay is $6. But the last 3 times I was there the sign was knocked over and there were no envelopes to put your payment in. Fishing at Madsen Bay has been good, but the fish keep getting smaller. MLK the average we caught were 12". We had the best bites on Atomic Teasers, Green, and the one with white, orange and pink. We also did fine with a white paddle bug. The fish were in 25-28 feet of water and the bites came at about 20 ft. And they came in bunches. We had time when everyone in our group was having bites at the same time. We had 2 small kids with us and one teenager. Everyone caught a fish.
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Thanks for the report, how bad was the slush and how deep was the snow?
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Slush was 4-6 inches at 1pm on mlk when we left. 12-16 inches of snow on top. I would expect with the warm weather to see at least 8” of slush on Saturday. I’ve seen it posted before but my advice is not to clear the snow but stomp it down. My buddy who hasn’t fish much in slush tried to clear to slush and had a lake before he started. Like others before me I suggest building an island of snow to stay out of the slush.
Oh and we tipped our jigs with night crawlers, meal worms and wax worms. Night crawlers got 5-10 more bites for every one bite on the others. But the others still worked.
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