Long Lake, Chippewa County

Had a family gathering up to the cabin over the weekend and boy, what a beautiful weekend! Got down to 46 degrees Sunday morning! Morning fog on the lakes were great! The morning bites were slow but some nice gills and pumpkinseeds were found, along with an occasional crappie.

Long Lake, however, is holding with a traditional mid-late summer bite. In the DARK. Anyone hunting for eyes, this is the ticket. Find 7-8 feet of water and troll floating raps or other shallow diving crank. Slow or fast is putting fish on the line. Rock bass and smallies are willing to join in too but it’ll get you some eyes. Most were fairly short but on Long, this is the rule. Either under 14″ or 1 over 18, with your limit being 2 fish.

Anyway, my niece decided to give us all a thrill and bring this monster to the boat………….

A 37″ gar! It shot up out of the water and scared her to death so being in “grandpa’s” boat, he had to deal with the fish. He did have a hard time holding the fish so the pic is what it is and it was a good 5 minutes of entertainment for all who witnessed it!

Kid,
Gotta love that lake….is the smallie top water bite going? Last year fishing in Dark toward the beaver hut we saw a group of gar sunning themselves!

I have heard rumors of some crawfish that inhabit the lake. Do they do some destrucion or something of the sort?

There’s tons of crawfish in the lake. You can see them easily at the landing on Hwy. 40. Destructive? I don’t have the wherewithal to answer that but they sure do fit into the smallie’s diets!! There are still weeded areas in the lake and there’s plenty of rockpile and rocky shoreline too. So…….. good? Bad? I don’t know enough history to indicate one way or the other.

Mo….. I haven’t chased the smallies during the day at all. I would think early morning would be a great time to go for a top bite. As for night fishing, it seems that no moon is tougher than full moon but the best bite I’ve seen up there right now has been at night. I go in the evening too and it’s just not happening. Let it get dark and the lake comes alive! It does go in spurts too….. all you can handle to “yawn” and back to all you can handle later on. Why withstand the heat of the summer sun when you can get the results in the dark? That’s my take on it……. and you don’t compete with much for anglers or recreational traffic. It’s really a sweet deal if you can talk yourself into doing it!

That Gar is preety cool too. What you catch it on, or did it jump into the boat? Theres quite a few of those on Fireside too. You ever fish that lake?

Yeah, I was on Fireside just last Sunday! I was trolling the boundaries of varous depths searching for muskies. Only did it for a couple hours and we had no action but I new the timing was terrible.

The gar was hauled in on a small #7 Floating Rap that somehow hooked the top of the nose! The hook was in! That’s pretty rare to actually get a hook into one of these prehistoric looking critters!

Have you been on Fireside recently?

Yeah, bout three weeks back. My friend’s grandparents own a cabin near the boat landing. We hit from there and made a loop over to the campground, then back accross. Alotta bass splashes and 1 little pike that swallowed my popper completely.
This winter we camped out there, and I got 3 dandy Northerns and a freind of mine got a nice Walleye.