So.....

.....10.000 lakes and no you is fishing? That's a shame because the fishing has been great this spring and early summer.

Locally the crappies and panfish have been tearing things up between the reservoirs, lake and the Mississippi River's backwaters.

The sunfish have shifted on the river to the wing dams in some areas, slow to move yet in others.

Crappies on the big river can be found now along the deeper rip-rap and in sunken wood along the channel edges with moderate to light current. The rip-rap is always a good place to start.

Our local lake is handing out crappies tot hose who are drifting/slow-trolling but picking apart dead wood in the water and working dock areas where the water is a bit deeper will reward those nicely who put in the work.

I'd like to hear what the rest of the state has going on even if I don't fish those locations. Come on people, post up.

Sorry CT this spring has been a real problem for me due to some health problems (I have missed 200 hours of work since the beginning of March - thank-heavens for good insurance and sound sick leave benefits - hopefully I am back for good now). I have been sorta out of the picture this spring. Also fallen behind on garden and house repairs; so I am doing some catchup, if slowly...

Still fishing crappies around the cities from time to time. Lots of crappies, few of any size, although we have taken a few 11 and 12 inchers with rumors of more in some places generally coming after dark. There are some nice crappies in the Cities waters, although most are smaller and that varies by lake too. Nokomis has as many as any one could ask for, you can see them along the docks, but few if any even make 7". Other lakes have fewer but far better quality. However Nokomis is the only one of the Park Board lakes here with no consumption advisory on bluegills or crappies; so it gets bucket fished by family licenses pretty heavily. Very little has the chance to live long enough to size up.

The family, some 100+ of us, will be gathering in the Staples/Motley area last week of July on a very good crappie lake with average size generally well over 10" with top end so far at 15". Good lake crappies for Minnesota. Also good bass and pike. This is one of those lakes with a put back on pike between 24" and 36" which has been a very good thing for size. Also nice walleyes for those who specialize. We had to learn our lake, but once done it has produced very well.

When I run the motor on this lake, I have a boat rule that any crappie 13" or bigger has to go back as breeding stock. We always have a meal or two of fresh fillets that week, but I would almost as soon just release everything. That wouldn't go over real well with every one, but for myself there are always enough others who harvest, and some of them not very selectively.

Time to get back to the chore of catching up on delayed tasks :-(

You take care Dutch. I hear ya on health issues. Starting last Thursday the smoke situation here from the Canadian fires has just about buried me. Even a good day is short on air, then throw in four days with health hazard warning due to foreign smoke and , well lets just say it hasn't been a peach here. Take care of yourself bud. We've still got way too many notes to compare.

Spinner & buzz baiting at the end of the witching hour last night on Shell Lake and had a 13 incher hammer one of the small spinnerbaits...it looks to be a promising week (if we can keep the hammer handles off our lines.)

Hi all, Nokomis is great by the dock, if they're biting... super-frustrating if not.

What other good city spots are there for crappies? I've tried Taft, Smith, and Nokomis so far. during the daytime. We've never gotten anything from Smith, and only a few fish from Taft.


-m

Some middle of the day fishing today, found us some nice bluegills along side the two 11" and one 12" crappies, and a boatfull of sunburns.


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All I found at Nokomis this year were dinkos; almost none of them even made 8", but they were so thick that one often could catch those crappies by simply jiggling a bare hook. Both docks, in fact. Nokomis is much better for bass and muskies during the daytime, and walleyes in the evening and after dark.

Much better size in Calhoun and Harriet, which have less harvest due to consumption advisories. Taft has never produced crappies for us outside early spring. No experience with Smith, but Cedar and sometimes Isles can be productive. So can Medicine and of course lots of crappies in Minnetonka and the smaller lakes around it.

Daytime is better for bass, pike and carp, crappies better in the evening and the last witching hour before dark when the sun goes down behind the trees on the west side of the lakes. Biggest crappies in the Chain of Lakes come after dark and can go 15" in very rare occasions, but not on Nokomis. Those big fish only come one or two at a time never in schools. They only seem to have started to show up after the consumption advisories reduced the numbers of family licenses that were fishing to fill buckets.

There are good crappie lakes all over the Metro, but one has to do one's own hunting. Of the crappie fishermen I know, very few who have the same favorite. Nearly everyone has a favorite relatively close to his home however.

Just spent a week on Fish Trap with 120 other family members. Strange fishing week. Decent catches of bass and pike, but the big crappies we were after were rare early in the week and disappeared completely after the cold front passed mid-week to be replaced by dinkos none of which even made 8". We then never saw another crappie bigger than that for the rest of the week, although we proceeded to catch dozens of the smaller fish, which weren't there before the cold front passed. Sorta wierd how the sizes just switched around so completely.


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4 from Wednesday (our only 4 crappies from Wednesday, in fact; this post is only for the three licenses in our immediate family. Most of the rest of the boats in the clan did worse than we did for crappies anyway... We have never taken so many truly dink crappies off this lake in the dozen of years we have been going there. We put the dinkos back so our harvest was truly curtailed this year.

We had a bit of trouble with a battery that would not hold its charge very well; curtailing our use of the electric which is what I use to manage drifts, and my sister had to wait until Monday to call into St Paul to straighten out a mess some ignorant clerk made of her initial attempt to get a license on Saturday evening. There were a few glitches in the weeks pattern.

We also took a lot of sunnies, one hybrid went 9", and some relatively nice sized rock bass, several largemouths to about 3 pounds, and a couple of pike. None of our people got skunked on any of my outings; so at least we can say we all caught some fish every outing.

Nice to hear that you've been out some Dutch. I hit the big river yesterday for a few hours and did ok. I didn't have a bucket along so everything I got was released. I had three crappies in the "almost 13" inch range....more than 12 but not 13. I did get three sheephead that were in the 10 to 12 pound range. Needless to say, they're still swimming but were a lot of fun on the 4 pound line.

I've been thinking about the Big River here, too, for carp. Where I have been fishing, the barge channel between the upper two St Anthony locks, changed this year, since they closed the top lock against Asian carp. Haven't yet adapted to the new patterns that resulted.

Hey No1, nice catch, good to see your fishing...

I made it up to the cabin for a few days and fished Lake Superior each morning and each afternoon. I was looking for Lake Trout and Salmon and managed a few fish for the smoker. We've seen a nice cold front come into the area bringing some much needed rain so maybe later in the week I'll hit the big river for a morning.

While up north we stumbled upon a mother lode of wild blueberries but were hardly dressed for spending much time in the brush with bugs, but we did pick enough to freeze some and make a batch of fresh muffins or two. Its hard to find a better wild berry. The locals all said its been to dry for any decent blueberry picking but we could have picked for two days in the one spot and filled ice cream pails. The 90 miles one way sort of cancelled the return to the berries but we're fine with what we found.

Sorry i didn't read this sooner . We were up to Fish trap Aug 26 to the 29 and the fishing was tough then also lots of small fish of all kinds . The only thing worth noting were the two 17" walleyes i caught in 27' of water.

This is the first year we have hit so many small crappies on Fish Trap. Some past years haven't produced any under 11" or 12". A few years ago the local lake association got DNR permission to herbicide the weeds, which were heavy in Eurasian milfoil. The crappie fishing has gone steadily down hill since then. What looks like eel grass was all over this year, the first time I can remember seeing that plant in that water. The weed mixture has both changed and declined since the herbiciding started. At least in my estimation. There are also now muskies for sure that have invaded from Alexander. So there is both a larger harvest and less cover; so live expectancy for the crappies is automatically declining, meaning smaller mature crappies.

Hey CT, I sorta been missing in action this summer. We got out a couple of times here in the Cities over the past week or two. Some decent crappies for in the City, with a couple of lakes producing a few running 9-12 inches. Picked up about a 3 pound walleye, too, this past week. Very interestingly the biggest crappies for us are coming right about the last half hour before full dark. The other evening in about 2 hours my buddy and I took a good dozen or so that ran 11" and 12" during that witching hour. Nothing doing for anything until the light went away far enough. A couple of evenings before that we picked up about the same number on another lake. 1s and 2s from particular spots, generally one inside arm of an indentation in the weedbed, and then we would have to rest it and change out plastics, before the same spot produced another one or two. Once again low light to almost full dark. But we are seeing 11 and 12" fish in the metro then and usually on lakes with consumption advisories. Nokomis, which has no advisory, can produce dozens of dinkos, but few to no fish that even make 8"+. Those other lakes with the advisories get less harvest and have larger crappies, even the average pushing 8-10", and the occasional couple to over 12". Not bad for core Metro waters.

My fishing has been off the mark this summer too Dutch. Around home anyways. I've done well on Superior and we just got back from a trip into Wisconsin in the Rice Lake area where we saw great crappie action. The local and river fishing can be iffy yet. We need to get some heat out of the water and with this wind and colder temps that's likely to start soon. I'm hitting the river tomorrow morning, but the water in Lake Pepin is still at 60 degrees so who knows what will be found. And then there's this cold front to deal with. Guy's gotta try though, eh?

I am thinking of going out again this afternoon. It is just about time for the milfoil to go down and the lakes to turn over. That will open up some shoreline pools and I expect to see some big eaters cruising the shallows to fatten up for winter on the newly exposed sunfish and maybe the crappies too. A lot of times the bigger crappies show up now as well as in the spring. We have been seeing a bit bigger than normal recently in a couple of lakes.

First though I am going to have to plant the last of my garlic. The last seed bulbs came in the mail just this last week for a couple of new varieties for me to test out. My own bulbs that I saved from last summer's harvest were planted out last week. This autumn planting of garlic is working out just fine. Pretty much just like planting tulips but not so deep.

My garlic didn't pan out this year. I think it was the variety.

The river was pretty meager today with only two of the dozen fish we caught being marginally large enough to keep so they all went back. Water is still too warm in both areas we stopped at. Next week will be the time to start according to the forecast at 5 tonight.