Mud Lake Fishing near Webster, South Dakota

• Overview

  Set in Day County, South Dakota, this is Mud Lake. The surroundings are lake country bush. Roughly 426 acres of surface: treat each bay as a water in its own right. Around 7.2 miles of bank, which is a long day on foot. Webster is the closest place, 8.1 miles off. Fargo sits 120 miles out, and it is the nearest city worth the name. No border sits close enough to matter.

• Where to Fish on Mud Lake

  No figure exists for depth, so let the water show you. Weed, then depth: that is the order to fish a water of this kind. Look for the band where the shallows give up and the bottom falls away. Day County records list common carp, black bullhead and green sunfish among the fish reported. These are county-wide records, so not all of them will be in this water. Read Mud Lake before you fish it and the day goes better.

• Seasonal Patterns

  The seasonal spread runs 10°F to 71°F. Winter puts a hard lid on this one. The lid usually goes in early April, which opens the strongest weeks of the year. On the long-run averages the water opens up around early April and starts locking again about late November. Early summer and early autumn carry the open-water season. The season on Mud Lake follows the weather closely.

• Tackle & Baits

  Access is not recorded for this water. This is a natural basin, not a dammed one. Nothing built is recorded close to the bank here. Bass water: a Texas-rigged worm near cover, a spinnerbait when you need to cover ground. Parking space is the usual limit rather than the bank itself. Where parking is tight, arriving early solves most problems. The nearest alternative is Horseshoe Lake, 2.5 miles out. Nothing here settles the position at Mud Lake for certain.