Thread: Lake Talquin, MLK Monday 2017

First thing I want to say - Lake Talquin Lodge and the staff are awesome. We rented a cabin for one night and found it comfortable with everything you need. Shower, kitchen with stove/oven, fridge/freezer, table, chairs, cooking equipment, etc. The Lodge has several covered boat slips for use on first come/serve basis. You claim it and it is yours for the entirety of your stay. The lodge has a well stocked bait and tackle shop at the ramp.

The lake itself is beautiful with much of it being flooded timber. Even in 20' of water, timber is present above the water line. We arrived late Sunday afternoon and put in with the intent of fishing past sundown - we rethought that after seeing the hazards.

This place is full of good crappie. When we arrived, there were several anglers at the Lodge's cleaning station with limits of good crappie from the day. A limit is 25 fish and they have to be ten inches or greater in length.

The good fishing means it is busy. There were scores of boats on the water. The current pattern is the fish are deep in or near the channel. My day on the lake I witnessed a constant parade of boats long-lining the channel. I, on the other hand, spider-rigged and pulled slow jigs and minnows. We found crappie suspended in 30-40 FOW at 18-22'.

A steady SSE wind at 11 MPH made detecting bites tougher and I am sure we missed several fish. Already mentioned Sunday was a good day; Monday was not as good. The wife and I managed to boat 10 keepers and a 3.78 pound striper. Very few short fish which says a lot about the lake IMO.

The hot color on Sunday was acid rain but we gave up on jigs altogether late Monday morning and rigged for minnows. All our fish were caught that way. Will post pics later.

John Doe
We have been to Talquin 6 trips in the last year and the hazards are every where. We do fish some at night now, but I run the route during the day so that I have it on gps then I can follow my tracks but I still go slow at night. The size of the fish is better than most places that I have fished. To me it is a hard lake to figure out but I enjoy fishing it. My wife loves it because on all but one trip we have seen eagles.

We stay at Ingram,s or The Whippoorwill. We left our camper at Ingram,s for the month of December which was nice except for the squirrels. One chewed a hole in a water line which I had to repair. It is nice to just hook up the boat and go. The people that we have meet over there are extremely nice and friendly also. I hope to go over again in two weeks.