Red Lake Crappie

Cookie, I was reading your other posts and it got my thinking how lucky I was to be a local up there when the Crappie bite was unreal.

Are you guys still finding a rouge slab here and there?

I think the DNR screwed up by bringing the walleye population back. They should have tried to figure out how to make that Crappie Fishery sustainable. That would have been sweet.

Typical 15″ Red Lake Slabs. I sure ate a lot of Crappie between 2000 and 2005.

I always wondered why they would destroy the best crappie lake in the country?!? Those were the good old days for sure!

I think the people are more to blame on the red lake crappies. Could of lasted a lot longer if every one that went didn’t have to keep there limit every time, every weekend they went… But it was fun while it lasted

It took miraculous conditions beyond the walleye population being down for those crappies to explode the way they did. Its absolutely impossible to manage a lake like that for crappies.

We still run in to a few of the elusive but still catchable upper red lake crappie. Kenny has a honey hole that he fishes hard in the spring and did real well this last spring. he also got over a hundred last winter. Times sure have changed we use to get 40 phone calls a day for fish houses and lodging now we just hope the phone rings? We now have a fantastic walleye fishery but the crappie sure brought up the crowds. I will always keep looking for the mother load though as you never know

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I think the people are more to blame on the red lake crappies. Could of lasted a lot longer if every one that went didn’t have to keep there limit every time, every weekend they went… But it was fun while it lasted

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The DNR promoted it. “Come up to Red Lake and keep a limit” seemed to be the theme of the day.

I will agree though. I remember one night we were about 4 miles out and I stepped out of my shack around 9 PM. I saw nothing but tail lights from my shack to shore and nothing but headlights from my shack out to about 8 miles. It was almost bumper to bumper cars for 8 miles of ice road.

I agree 100% that they promoted it but I think they could of promoted it a little better to make the resource last longer.