Hanging Kettle

Anyone fishing Hanging Kettle? i’m normally up there quite a bit, but haven’t had a chance to get up this year. the smallies seem to be biting farm island, on anything.

I used to fish the whole chain, Hanging Kettle, Diamond, and Ripple for walleyes and panfish. About 3 years ago the walleye fishing just went in the tank. Panfish size has steadily been declining also. Fishing pressure on these lakes has increased quite a bit, especially since they improved the access on Ripple. It is really bad in the winter also. I see a lot of shacks out there with local addresses, I think the locals have just pounded these lakes dry.

I didn’t make it out on Hanging Kettle this year when I was vacationin g in June, but last year we did pretty well with the Bluegills and Northerns. The pike were right where you’d expect them to be, deep weedlines on points. The ‘gills were deep (15-18 feet) and were hitting very light. We ended up “ice fishing” them with waxies and small jigs right over the side of the boat.

I agree that the Walleye fishing isn’t what it used to be. I saw a lot of small fish come out of that lake in the 90’s, and it just isn’t that big.

Rootski

Thanks for the info. It was just as I suspected to hear. I’ll try my luck this weekend on the lake but may cruise to farm island and try my luck at the smallies that are hitting out there.

Dan is right on about the decreasing size in these lakes. My family has a cabin on Kettle – fished it my whole life. It used to be a “private” access lake until the late 80’s when the DNR put in a public access in “exchange” for stocking the lake with more walleyes. Well, the stocking plan didn’t really work out and I don’t think they stock it anymore despite the lake having a few resident walleyes. The reality is that Kettle is not a great walleye lake, but northerns, bass, and panfish are plentiful (as well as dogfish all of a sudden .

The only thing that irritates me is the new stop logs placed on the overhead dam going into Ripple which severely limits anlger access from Diamond and Kettle. I talked ot the DNR hydrologist out of Aitkin last spring until I was blue in the face. It’s a crock when he told me that the stop logs have always been placed as high as they were this spring. Reason for the stop logs is that Ripple is six inches higher in elevation (thus the Ripple River flow) that Kettle and with drought conditions, they wanted to try and maintain Ripple’s water level . Whatever.

Anyway, I’m usually on the fly fishing forum here, but I’ll stop back and check into this one since I have an obvious interest. I’ll share my story about the pontoon going fullbore with the motor down over the 4th of July trying to navigate the river between Diamond and Ripple with the low water levels we’ve had…. .