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The Red Door Resort’s 2022 Ice Season Recap

The Red Door Resort just wrapped our best ice fishing season ever! If you missed us this year, it’s never too early to start making your 2022/2023 hard-water angling plans – especially because as our reputation continues to grow, we hope to be able to say the same thing every single March for years to come: Best. Ice. Fishing. Season. Ever.
Keep reading for a recap of the five headliners from our 2021/2022 season: partnerships with Rapala’s Ice Force, Jenny Anderson (aka Girl of 10,000 Lakes), Hometown Hero Outdoors, and Busch Light, as well as our inaugural Tullibee Tourney. But let’s begin with our general State of the Resort Report.

Mother Nature is in Charge… Always

Every ice season is different… it’s just the nature of the beast. One little blip in Mother Nature’s schedule – a weeklong heatwave shortly after the initial hard freeze, for example – can affect the ice conditions for the next ten weeks! But we were pretty fortunate this year.
Despite LOTS of snow (30+ inches after the initial freeze) and sustained periods of strong winds, the ice was mostly cooperative with limited heaving and breaking. The Red Door Resort’s Ice Team did a remarkable job clearing wide ice highways and providing access to the sand breaks and all 11 mud flats: Wiemer, Bomback, Pantry, Resort, Matton, Purity, Bitcher, Fletcher, Fishouse, Eileens, and Backer.
With such cooperation from Mother Nature, our wheelhouse fish house rentals were on the lake in time for New Year’s Weekend. In fact, all 18 of our fish house rentals were booked every single weekend of the season (and often midweek too!) Similarly, our onshore lodging – 11 Cabins, 10 Motel Rooms, and Family Motel Suite – was completely sold out several weekends during January and February.
Like we said, it’s never too early to start making your 2022/2023 hard-water angling plans! OK, so let’s get to the good stuff…

Recapping The Red Door Resort’s Ice Fishing Season Event Calendar

As we mentioned, we proudly hosted five events this year. Here’s a quick peak at each of them.

Rapala's Ice Force

We had a great time hosting the Ice Pro Staff of Rapala. We spent two full days fishing Lake Mille Lacs with this great group of high-quality and truly talented individuals. We certainly hope to have the gang back!

Girl of 10,000 Lakes

What a genuine treat it was having the Girl of 10,000 Lakes, Jenny Anderson and her family make The Red Door Resort their home base when ice fishing on Mille Lacs. It was such a pleasure getting to know them. Plus, Jenny captured some fantastic footage while she was here, including a video of our Stone House rental and tons of ice fishing photos. Check out her Instagram feed to see all of it!

Busch Light

Oh, man, was this ever fun! Anheuser-Busch hosted its 2022 Busch Light Ice Shanty Sweepstakes at The Red Door Resort where. The team wrapped one of our 21′ RV-edition Ice Castles to look like a seasonal ice fishing beer case. A lucky winner and plus-one was selected to stay in the fully-loaded Busch Light Ice Shanty for a full week. Naturally, it included all the Busch Light they could drink!

As part of this event, we hosted the youbetcha team as they helped launch the sweepstakes. The entire experience may well have been the highlight of the season if not for our last two special events

Hometown Heroes Outdoors

The Red Door Resort was truly honored to partner with Hometown Hero Outdoors to host a January ice fishing trip. This not-for-profit organization is dedicated to facilitating outdoor adventures for actively serving military, military veterans, and licensed law enforcement officers. We were pleased to donate ice houses for this event.

From their own Facebook page: “This week, #HHOTeamMN was able to get 13 of our nation’s heroes out on Mille Lacs Lake with the help of The Red Door Resort, who graciously donated two of their sleeper houses for us to use.”
We hope they know it was our distinct pleasure!

We ended The Red Door Resort’s best-ever ice fishing season by hosting our inaugural Tullibee Tourney. And while we can’t be certain, we think it may very well also be the first-ever tullibee ice fishing tournament in the entire state of Minnesota!

We had 50 anglers register for the event, including a member of Rapala’s Ice Force Prostaff, Kee Kong. We had great weather and the anglers enjoyed lots of success pulling tullibee from the lake.
Our three winners were: 1) Tanner T., 2) Tate T., and 3) Kao X, whose 5-fish bags weighed in at 9.8 lbs, 8.85 lbs, and 8.75 lbs, respectively. The award for the largest single tullibee also went to Tanner T. at a whopping 2.05 pounds (for those who don’t know, that’s a good-sized tullibee!)

In all, we awarded $1,900 in prize money, hosted a fun Saturday night dinner for all entrants, and started a brand-new, late-winter tradition at The Red Door Resort! Save the date for our second annual Tullibee Tourney: Saturday, March 4, 2023. Let’s make next year’s event the biggest tullibee tournament on Lake Mille Lacs, in the state of Minnesota, in the entire US!

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We are located on the North Shore of Mille Lacs Lake adjacent to the Wealthwood State Forest.

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