Team Series pros prepare to tackle Le Homme Dieu Chain, Lake Ida for Lucas Oil Qualifier Presented by B&W Trailer Hitches

ALEXANDRIA, Minn. – Minnesota is known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” and there are actually even more than that – 11,842 of them, to be exact. So when the nine three-man teams arrived in Alexandria, Minnesota, in September for the inaugural General Tires Team Series event – the Lucas Oil Qualifier Presented by B&W Trailer Hitches – they knew that multiple lakes might be in play. It turned out that the playing field for six days of competition would be the Le Homme Dieu Chain and Lake Ida, both located just north of downtown Alexandria.

Le Homme Dieu Chain

The Le Homme Dieu Chain includes lakes Darling, Alvin, Carlos, and Le Homme Dieu. The chain is connected by a series of shallow channels – altogether, the chain covers 37 miles of shoreline and 5,405 surface acres. So while the Le Homme Dieu lakes are, in essence, one sprawling body of water, they all feature notable differences in topography and depths.

According to Team Star brite pro Bradley Roy, the largest of the bunch is Lake Carlos, which is also easily the deepest lake in the chain, reaching down to 163 feet deep.

“(Lake Carlos) has some really deep water out in the middle of the basins and is much deeper than the other lakes, but looks about the same near shore with shallow flats and not much depth around the bank,” Roy said. “All of the lakes are well populated with fish and the shore is lined with docks. They’re your typical northern natural lakes, but connected by man-made canals – those canals are pretty featureless but had some wind current running through from one lake to another.”

From the moment Roy and the rest of the competitors arrived, most of them regarded the chain as typical northern fisheries with many of the same features that he’s seen in other fisheries.

“You have the visible stuff like docks and much of the shore is also lined with pencil reeds,” Roy said. “From there, you also have several types of vegetation under the surface, including some good-looking milfoil and what I call ‘pondweed.’ These are classic northern fisheries and have a good mix of vegetation and places for bass to hide, both largemouth and smallmouth. With so many docks to choose from, you would never run out of targets to cast to and the grass makes great defined edges in deeper water if you want to fish out a little deeper.”

Lake Ida

Lake Ida served as location No. 2 at the Lucas Oil Qualifier, and although it’s it’s a singular body of water, it’s almost as big as the combined lakes of the Le Homme Dieu Chain; Ida features 21 miles of shoreline and 4,314 surface areas. Located just northwest of Le Homme Dieu, Lake Ida shares many of the same physical features.

Team Builders FirstSource captain Stephen Browning explained that Ida featured two distinct sections.

“It’s like two lakes in one, with the lower end being really flat near the shore and then having sharp breaks into deeper water,” Browning said. “You could be fishing a grass edge in 20 feet of water and still see the bottom in shallow water because it dropped so quickly.”

Like Le Homme Dieu Chain, Lake Ida is full of vegetation: “It has it all,” Browning said. “I saw milfoil, hydrilla, coontail. It has plenty of vegetation up shallow and also out deeper. The water clarity was clear throughout Ida, with at least 6 to 7 feet of visibility.”

The upper section of Ida features the same clear water but more flats extending further into the lake, according to Browning.

“You might be 75 or 100 yards off the bank and still only 6 or 7 feet deep before seeing a good, hard drop into that 20-foot range,” he said. “The lake also has pencil reeds and docks along the shoreline, but the docks were all pretty shallow, with the ends in 3 to 5 feet of water. There’s no shortage of things to fish.”