Red Lake Mayhem

The fishing not the boats! Predictions of overcrowding could not be further from the truth. We rolled into a south access around 7:00 on Sat and there were only about 3 rigs parked there. The most boats we could see at once was around 8!!!!! Never even drifted close enough to another boat to say hi…Enough about the traffic. The fishing was excellent. Excellent. The fish were all in the mid to upper teens. Few dinks and a few pushing 20. Biggest fish of the day was 22 for us and the CO we spoke to said no reports of any over 26 coming in. But my are those fish healthy. Beautiful fish. Like Mille Lacs. It was basically a minnow bite but we did catch a few on leaches and trolling cranks just for fun. One of our two boats got on a bobber bite like no other. 1-2 hours of non-stop catching. It was like a good blue gill bite. Unreal. Overall the fishing was not always hot and heavy but it was consisitent from 7-4. Between 4 guys we think we caught around 120 fish. Easily kept our 2 a piece. Getting your fish as close to the 17″ mark was the fun part. Watching the CO’s eyes as they measured multiple 16 3/4 fish was priceless. And yes every fish coming off that lake was checked.

Fish were in 6-8 feet of water and seemed to prefer pink/red hardware. I hope this lake continues to recover fully because I cant wait to get back in a few years when the bigger fish class becomes available. Anyone else make it out there?

ps-hit Winnie on Sunday and found out was heavy boat traffic really means!

Suzuki, did you catch any crappies. I heard that no one caught any, but it was probably do to the weather. They were catching them 2 weeks ago and then the cold weather turned them off. Im heading up there this sunday for 3 days and Im hoping for walleyes and crappies.

Not one crappie but we weren’t looking either. We were there strictly for the walleyes so once located we stayed on them. My boat caught nothing but eyes. Our other boat landed 2 perch and one small pike.

We got 6 crappies on Thursday and the water temp was 58 on Sunday when we left the water was temp 48. Got 3 more Saturday and Sunday. All together 2 of us got 107 walleyes. Saturday night my rod was hot about every 30 sec I had a bite for a hour or so. Got 40 by myself right next to the boat in 6.5 fow. Crazy that I was sick of catching walleye.

Mike,
Sounds like a very fun weekend of catching.
Congrats.
Jack..

Awesome report, Thanks! I wanted to go there for opener, but tradition got the best of me. Just curious, if I do make it up there this summer, how far in advance would I have to make reservations…..like at Rogers Campground, for instance???

I was thinking it was going to be nuts up there. I can’t believe that there was not the traffic that was predicted.

We have a crew heading up later in June. I hope it will still be hot.

Roger’s told us they are taking seasonal campers only this year and absolutely no tents unless you are old customers/friends. The ramp is outstanding.

Mayham, this weekend it is .Annie and i got to the landing aroud 11, there must have been 200 trucks. We were in in about 5 min and on the water in10. the fishing was fantastic caught 3 at 16 .750 wow they are little fottballs the fourth was 14. Caught an released just a ton of fish . A little note you dont need to drift. to catch the fish find them anchor and catch them drifting was totaly anoying with all those boats we have a small 12 footer so its hard toget out to far. It sure is nice living up hear its sweet living so close to these lakes. Igrew up in lax. wi we caught walters like i use to catch gills. ran in to an old friend from rochester. it is a small world on top of min.ma fried up the fish for supper wow they tasted great. if you got kids and you want take t6hem fishing to catch eyes red is the lake of choice, i swear they are the easeist plac i have ever caught them. well i think i will wait tell monday to go back when the crowd go back south.

We were there last Thursday after a 2 hr drive from Leech Lake. It was well worth it. After fishing Leech a guy needs to get the catching thing out of his system. We started out in front the launch and fished in the crowd with success. But it wasn’t as fast and furious as advertised so we hit this rock pile close to shore. We found the fish and could not put the minnows on fast enough. So we switched to soft plastics and this is where the fun started. We snapped jigged the area and caught 75 walleyes in 2 hrs. We also put about 30 sheephead in the boat. It was back to reality the next day on Winnie on a dead calm day we only caught one. The crowds were manageable and launching the boat was no problem