Bone Lake Stats
- Acres: 1667
- Max Depth: 43 feet
- Mean Depth: 23 feet
- Bottom: 75% sand, 0% gravel, 15% rock, 10% muck
- Shore Length: 12.5 miles
- Water Clarity: 8.5 feet
- Water Color: Medium brown
- DNR Contour Map
- Google Maps Location
Bone Lake Fish Species
- Musky (Common)
- Northern Pike (Common)
- Largemouth Bass (Common)
- Panfish (Common)
Watch us ice fish bone lake in January
Boat Landings at Bone Lake
Bone lake has two public landings. One on the north end and one on the south end.
I only used the one on the north end.
The north end has a very nice boat landing. It is provided and maintained by the Luck Lions Club.
The landing also has a picnic area with a pavilion and BBQ grills, fishing pier, and toilets.
The boat launch was covered in snow, so I can’t say for sure what condition it is in, but it looked good from what I can tell.
I only stayed in the north part of the lake, so I’m not able to say what condition the south landing is in.
Commentary on Bone Lake
Bone lake is located a few miles southeast of Luck, WI. This is a beautiful lake that’s off the beaten path, and surrounded by forests. Despite that, it does have about 500 residential homes along its shore. The runoff from these homes have caused algae growth which reduced clarity to about 4 feet.
Bone lake has received grants from the DNR to help manage this lake. Since then, the water clarity has gone up, and is now around 8.5 feet of clarity.
Bone lake was originally named Onondogacona by the Native Americans. It was later named by early European inhabitants who found Native American bones on one of the islands.
Muskies have been stocked in here, but if you catch one over 40 inches, your doing good. Other than musky, you will find crappie, perch, bluegill, large mouth bass and northern pike. I have also read that smallmouth bass have been recently stocked here as well.
If you are interested in the management plan for bone lake, you can find info here.
If you are looking for spots to fish on Bone lake, the red circles above will give you a good place to start.
Fishing Experience on Bone Lake
My day started out with a plan to ice fish Antler lake. A small lake nearby.
When I realized that I would not be able to fish Antler lake, I looked for the next closest lake. Bone lake was only a 10 minute drive away, and looked like a good lake.
I wasn’t sure how thick the ice was, so I used my ATV and pulled my portable Otter shack. Since I wasn’t planning on fishing here, I hadn’t previously researched it and was unsure where to fish.
We started off along the shoreline on the northeast side. The shorelines here are quite steep. The bottoms are mostly 30-40 feet deep. We drilled a few holes until we found a little higher ground at around 20 feet.
Before I could even get a line down, Reggie was pulling up perch. The fish finder was showing solid red at the bottom due to the amount of perch swimming around.
We wanted to try a few spots, so we moved a little further down the lake to a point on the west side. We set up in a 40 foot hole off the point.
We immediately started seeing fish. In fact, I don’t know if I have ever seen this many fish on my fish finder at once. The fish were anywhere from 10 to 40 feet down.
I had my Aqua-Vu Revolution Pro in the water, and it didn’t matter where I pointed it, I saw fish.
It was mostly perch, but there were a few crappies sprinkled in the mix as well.
We tried one more spot on the northwest side. We found a shelf that stuck out from a point, and was much shallower.
We found an old hole and blood on the ice, so we put down a camera, but didn’t see much. We moved in a little shallower until we found a few weeds and tried there.
I was using a Rapala Rippin Rap at first to attract some attention. It didn’t take long before a northern pike came into the picture. Unfortunately, he was just looking.
We did see quite a few bluegills in this spot, along with a couple perch. It didn’t take much to convince them to bite.
For not even planning on fishing here, Bone lake turned out to be the best lake I fished all winter. We only explored about the top third of this lake and did incredibly well. I would love to see what the rest of the lake has to offer.
I’ve heard some feedback from a few fishermen who say this is one of their favorite ice fishing lakes. I’m sure its a decent lake in the summer too, but it does receive a fair amount of recreational traffic then.
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