There is a boat launch at the south east part of the lake (can be seen on google maps and is also indicated on the depth map) but i tried to access there today and the road coming west off the grid (south of the lake) is not plowed and in fact the grader left a ridge of snow from the plowing right over the road access that might be tough to get over. The snow ont hat road isnt crazy deep right now but it was definitely up to a foot in a few drifted in spots, plus the snow pile at the turnoff is at least 1 to 1.5 ft thick.
We ended up walking on from the north onto the eastern lake. There is a open spot in the fence near the intersection at the northern most spot on the eastern lake. Looks like people have been walking out and also sledding in from there. I dunno if there are many more public access spots on the lake. I don't think there is very good access at the "Image Damour" community that is south of the lake right off highway 12. I did some drilling in there years about before i was in to ice fishing (so i didn't scope it out all that well in that regard) but i recall the slopes being pretty darn steep over there and i dont think they have a boat launch or road to the water.
Ice was 12-14 inches thick everywhere we drilled. About maybe 2-4 inches of snow on the lake in most spots, occasional deeper drifts. Heard a lot of cracking today and sometimes you could feel it go past you a bit. My buddy said he felt a slight drop under his feet at one point. Some of the holes we drilled the water sat 1-2 inch below the hole.
We had a pretty rough day for fishing out there today though. Fishing from 10:30 to 4:30 and only got one tiny tiny perch... and i dont think that perch even bit my hook!!! i hooked it through the side of its body while jigging up haha. We had 2-3 other bites but that was it. at one point i was toying with some perch and possibly a smaller fish that i could see on the flasher. I got one bite from that but the rest of it did not amount to anything. We saw one pike on the camera but after we spent about a hour in the shack we spent the whole day just out on the ice.
at least it was beautiful out today. drilled a lot of holes and were very mobile but it didnt really pay off. its too bad cause the lake actually has some decent shoreline structure and fairly decent depths considering how small it is. we were able to cover a good amount of spots that looked promising. However the lake bottom looked pretty barren from what we could see on the camera. very sandy and flat bottom (had slopes but mostly very straight, no bumps, holes etc). water was very clear but for the majority of the time it seemed devoid of any life lol.
We started out in 10 fow then after 1.5 hrs with seeing nothing we moved out to basically the middle of the lake in the north east part of the lake in hopes of deeper water and maybe some perch or walleye. Not too long after that i started seeing marks on the flasher that could have been tiny perch and getting a few very light nibbles. We were in 23 fow fyi. Didnt seem that hard to find the perch but they were super tiny at that spot at least.
Tried fishing 4,7,10, 15-18, 20-24 feet of water today at various times and hole hopping to no avail. I had a bite on an old pike eyeball that i had kept for bait, we also had another solid bite on beef heart.
My buddy has had decent luck at D'amour in the open water season for pike. his brother has went there in the winter before though and i think he had bad luck too.
Good luck to anyone who tries fishing out there.
