Fairbault area fishing

Does anyone have any reports for the fairbault area lakes?

no one fishes there

eyeguy507 wrote:

no one fishes there

x2………

Well that seems a little odd, I wonder why not?

There’s no fish in those lakes around there

Coletrain27 wrote:

There’s no fish in those lakes around there

Those lakes get hit so hard there is not much in there. We first stopped at French lake and there were so many people we didn’t even go on the lake and moved over to Mazaska. Mazaska lake was also packed (673 acres in size) and no joke, there was over 100 people out there that day. I had a hard time finding a spot to fish where I was not on top of someone else. We caught fish but nothing of any size. With how much pressure there is on those lakes I am surprised there is anything in there. I didn’t head back to that area after that this year.

I always get conned into going there once every winter and I have yet to catch 1 fish in the last decade through the ice in that area on multiple lakes. I finally said skrew it. is ice fishing so popular that hundreds of anglers go there?

I lived in Mankato for 10 yrs and Owatonna for 3.
Spent plenty of time on those lakes. Get away from the crowd and earn your fish. There’s plenty in those lakes.

Granted, it’s no Mississippi…Hence why i moved away and haven’t been back.

Getting skunked over there i remember being hard to do..Granted you gotta put in the effort.

I cannot give details as i have friends over there who would burn me at the stake. There’s fish

eyeguy507 wrote:

is ice fishing so popular that hundreds of anglers go there?

That weekend the whole lake was trucks, shacks, and icehouse with just a little room between each. It was a nice weekend so there may have been more than normal.

FBRM is spot on. I grew up fishing those lakes. Certain ones every year produce huge panfish. Just have to know where to target them and what time of day. There’s no one fishing within 200 yards of us and we are catching huge gills

I catch fish there soft water if I go but putting in effort on ice, I really don’t have that luxury unless I lived nearby which I do not. FBRM, even if you gave me coordinates, I would not catch fish there. I’ll stick to my puddles to the south for ice and the river come spring.

Nobody goes there anymore it’s too crowded
-Yogi

Rodwork wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>eyeguy507 wrote:</div>
is <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>ice fishing so popular that hundreds of anglers go there?

That weekend the whole lake was trucks, shacks, and icehouse with just a little room between each. It was a nice weekend so there may have been more than normal.

While I agree many of the lakes get heavy pressure there are fish to be caught. I think the problem with a lot of ice fisherman is that they only focus on the spots where everyone else is already set up. I fish that area often and like others have said you have to get out by yourself and find fish. It takes some time but you can find them and catch them. I think ice fishing any area near largest populations have similar ptoblems.

My fishing partner has family in the area and so every year we take 3 days and fish all of those lakes. We’ve done this for about 10 years.

There are times where some lakes treat us better than others but we will find at least one of those lakes taht will treat us right and I can’t think of one trip we’ve gone up there where we were like that was a waste of time.

This year we fished Cedar and French. We wanted to try others but we caught so many fish on both it was unbelieveable.

Thursday afternoon we fished CEDAR. We caught at least a dozen Bluegills over 8.5″ and countless others. We also caught each a limit of Crappies over 9″. We didn’t even need to be that mobile. Just away from the crowds.

Friday we fished MAZASKA in the morning. It was very slow and the fish were scattered. There were also a million 4 wheelers out prefishing for a MN Made tournament there on Sunday. so we headed out to FRENCH.

the word on French was that there were fish shwoing up but not biting and a ton of small fish. Everyone was complaining about overfishing and blah blah blah. It was a village over the large East hole. And that is where for the most part EVERYONE was concentrated. We headed west and within a few minutes of searching found about a 1000 sqr feet school of crappies. and for 2 days we caught probably over 100 10″+ crappies and 200 or so under that. for most of that time we had nobody around us.

In years past we’ve hammered good crappies and gills at ROBERDS, We took home limits of 10″+ perch at CANNON the FIRST time ever fishing it.

We take what the lakes give us and its not always about moving away from the crowd. there are good fish around the crowds at times. But there are tons of times where you just have to move away.

I believe most of the people that gripe about the lakes not having good fish are people who want a place to plop their ice castle down and come out and drink beer and watch tv.

In our 10 years of fishing there those are the people that gripe. the people that we meet that put the work in are willing to move about even just a little bit, love these lakes.

They certainly feel more pressured than they did 10 years ago but we’ve not seen any drop off in fish quality from year to year.

And We are not professional fisherman by any stretch of the imagination. we are just 2 schmoes who have 3 days to try and find as many fish as we possibly can and are willing to move about.

We don’t have the privilege of being able to just drive our vehicles all over the ice to stay mobile down here. for us we either have to haul it by hand or stay close to the launches.

Just gotta know where to fish and fine them. We usually do pretty good and catch our limit on some good size panfish.

Anyone been out in faribault the last couple days? I checked mazaska yesterday and found some sketchy ice. Didnt trust it enough to fish

Was Mazaska too sketchy to walk out?

Some spots I couldn’t get through w the Spud bar and others only took 1 hit. I only made it out about 50 ft before turning back

the ice is toast after this week……please be safe in Southern MN. I checked one of my local puddles and the ice was deteriorating really fast. You might find safe ice on bigger lakes but I am done south of Fairbault.