Slave Lake Tips
 

So some friends and I headed to Cutbank on Slave last weekend and boy was fishing ever slow. I have fished Slave every winter for the past few years and have always been able to catch a variety of fish. - although this was my first time at Cutbank. This past weekend 4 of us fished as hard as possible and managed only a handful of baby pike. Anyone know whats hot for eyes right now? Headed back up Feb 1st with some buddies and I know they are looking to me to provide some direction on how to catch fish but last weekend was so discouraging I am starting to doubt I have the solution. We tried jig & minnow, glow spoon & minnow, lipless rattle crank baits, and a variety of others. Any tips would be much appreciated. Cheers.

Maybe try south side, cutbank has been slow from what I hear. I guess that what happens when a few hundred people fish there every weekend now,

You are doing all the right things. Sometimes the fish just get lockjaw.

When fishing is slow due to weather you really have two options slow down your presentation (smaller, lighter, stiller) or target the few active fish during active periods.
For me this usually means fish the bottom of structure slowly during the day and search for active fish during the dawn and dusk periods on structure and up in shallow water as these fish are usually going to actively bite. Sometimes a jigging spoon can be the ticket and sometimes a small minnow with 6lb fluorocarbon a single snell hook and a split shot will be the deal.
Cutbank has great structure but you got to drill holes and be active as the fish on a typical day will be at the bottom of the drop and deeper but will move up the structure and up into 5-10 fow for dusk.
When fishing is slow you cant be, drill holes use dead sticks and bounce around will always be more productive but if you want to sit in a ice house warm and comfy and catch the odd fish feel free I do it lots in mine too.

We were up at Cutbank beginning of January. The fishing was painful. It was dead slow. I noticed on the camera that the bottom of the lake was infested with shrimp and some sort of water worms. I tried over sized wire worms that I tied, trying to match what I saw on the Camera. Success !!!!!!!!!!!!!! I caught over 10 Walleye , 8 Pike and 4 Burbout and a couple of whites . I missed 3 or 4 Perch. Maybe the wire worms I used were too big for them. Credit goes to Zip who shared his wire worm patterns with all members here. Try making some of these and tip the hooks with the tails of minnows . I didnt have maggots to try . Good Luck and tight lines :)

https://i.imgur.com/larrDpD.jpg

Just finished 3 days at Cutbank, fishing was horrid. Managed 2 nice walleye, but for 6 guys fishing 3 days, thats not good enough.

The fishing pressure is ridiculous. Shacks every 10 feet across all of cutbank. And the "locals" running nets 50 yards from the shacks doesn't help the cause either.

This lake used to produce huge numbers and quality. I'm sure there's still good days here and there, but over all its dropped significantly in the last 15 years.

As far as tips, the best results we had were either green jig head or red/orange combo jig head tipped with a minnow. No other combo even got a bite.

Biggest was 63 cm and 4.9 pounds and the smaller was 61 cm and 4.2 pounds.

Their was four of us at Cutbank last weekend. What a tough weekend. Between the four of us we caught 3 small pike over a period of three days. The part that bothers me is the guy that rented us the shack told us fishing was rockin for the last three weeks.

He is a salesman...

What are they going to say ,theres way to many shacks here and people are netting also,:)

Bahahahahaha. Your soo right whelen. Our first day sucked. Thank god we had some luck for the rest of the weekend.

Guys I should mention that was a total of fish caught over the last two days of the weekend. Heres a pic of a few of them .

https://i.imgur.com/wWl8SCl.jpg

Try cutting a minnow in half it’s always worked the best for me at slave.
Are they driving out at cutbank or atv?

they all say that to rent shacks

Lol. Fishing is always rocking in the rental shacks.....apparently.

Who did you rent with? We are heading up and go on at hilliards bay... some years unreal... other years not so much but usually enough to have a few fish frys

I don’t think it matters who you rent with. Slave Lake winter is different than Slave Lake summer. I think there’s lots of fish. Catch lots in summer. In winter see lots on camera staring at my hook. They are there. That’s just how ice fishing goes IMHO.
I’m in the camp of hanging out in a warm shack with good company and if a fish bites so be it. I will leave hole jumping to others.
I’ve been in the rental shack at cutback and they are very nice. Personally I’d rather catch 2 fish in my T-shirt in January in a shack than 10 in a day freezing my baggets off. Just me though.

Wire worms might be the only thing we didn’t try. Where does a guy get those little glow beads for the wire worms? Thanks all for the tips and advice. Hopefully I can find em here next time.

You can get the glow beads at the Fishin Hole . Good Luck

Has the fishing at cutbank picked up at all yet? Heading out there next weekend (March 1-3)