Malmo Area Fishing Report

What an amazing weekend! With beautiful weather and being able to spend time with friends and family I truely felt blessed to be an American this Memorial Day… THANK YOU to all of the men and women who have of given themselves to make it all possible

And now on to the fishing…

For anyone who has never trolled shallow cranks you’re missing out bigtime. Any newbies with who I’ve had the pleasure of sharing my boat this spring are now almost as addicted as I am. We able to consistently catch double digits of walleyes every evening with a ton of smallies, northerns, and even every Iowan’s favorite (rock bass) mixed in.

We spent the evenings targeting rock to weed transitions in 6-10 FOW with our most productive pattern being bent-lip shaps trolled at 1.8-2.0 MPH with 125′ to 150′ of line. Perch and black/silver were the most productive colors. With the weeds really starting to grow we found most of our fish holding right on the transitions or even over the weed beds rather then relating to rocks as had been the case on opening weekend.

Most of the big Eyes have moved out to deeper water, but we did pick up on nice 26.5″ eye and several smallies with a couple that were pushing 20″. Also the northern bite kicked off on Sunday night as we boated at least a dozen with the biggest one probably weighing in the high single digits… He was a healthy fish but had a giant hump-back.

I also want to give out a big thanks to Fishers Resort for the great launch trip we took as a group on Saturday night… I believe the final tally was 43 fish with 20 keepers… Pretty good in my book for group of mostly non-fishermen!

nice job we need to get out some time

just got into cranking this weekend for the first time….now i gotta figure out how to pinch pennies to get a couple better setups and about 200 more crank baits….glad you guys got fish and were able to enjoy the weather.

Charles

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nice job we need to get out some time

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Let’s make plans to get out and troll the basin on the weekend of the 19th or 26th.

just wondering, do you catch these so called “Iowa’s favorite fish” out on the mud flats, just wanting to pick up a big mess for the freezer. Maybe you can elaborate on some tried and true tactics, and when is the best time to drive up and fish them? Since they are in the bass family, do they taste as good as small mouth?

Growing up my dad and I would always spend the 1st weekend of June camping up at Spider Lake by Grand Rapids and every year the same group from Iowa would drive 8 hrs just to spend the whole weekend fishing rock bass… While we were cleaning our walleyes and crappies they would be there for hours every night cleaning their daily catch of rockos…
I think they’re second favorite fish to eat were smallies

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I think they’re second favorite fish to eat were smallies

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I thought it was bullheads?????????

at least you guys can call them by their proper name, red eye roughy! Had a group of MN guys cuss us out for throwing them back, said they would take everyone. I guess it’s not just the IA guys who think the fish can be fed to the relatives!

That’s got to be a first.. Usually people get cussed out for keeping too many fish.

And I’ll have to admit there are plenty in MN who would be happy with red eyed roughies… I’ll be heading to the the Coon Rapids Damn tonight for a bikeride with folks from Courage Center and I guarentee there will be about a hundred people there who would rather catch them then walleyes

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I thought it was bullheads?????????

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Don’t forget about Eelpout!!

Congrats and thanks for the report MM!