Red Lake Crappies

I would have to honestly admit the I had more fun catching those Red crappies than I ever had any other time ice fishing. And I’ve had a few trips in the last 25 years or so..

Juggs, my point was, the crappies aren’t going anywhere. Thousands of people will still drive to Red Lake daily to now catch and keep both Walleye & Crappie. When walleye season opens the crappie fishing will still be very good and the lake will be even more popular because those that get skunked on crappies will surely have some walleye to bring home

Juggs, I believe North Lake is goin gto be HOT this year for URL sized crappies. With all the shiners in the system this year, the fish should be there.

Scott, you are probably much more farmilliar with how Red was before the crappie boom. Did people go there and seek out crappie before this? (In Winter.) In talking to Roger’s Resort and the Biologist, he said the population of crappies was much lower, but always there. Most of the fishing done for them was in the spring when they would come into the Tamarac and other tributaties.

I would have to believe that there had to be a sizable population to start with to explode to the levels we had seen of late.

You can look back on the test netting for years, the population has always been there and always will be. People caught them in the winter, but not to the extent they do now. But, you have to remember, there were very few people out fishing back then. Even when the walleyes were abundant, there was not 1/100th of the people fishing the lake that there is today. Even at the crappie peak, there are lots of people that drive all the way up there and do not catch a fish.

It was the abscence of predator fish and the perfect spawn that created this boom. We may never see that again, but we will see the walleye population decrease, the perch population increase and another huge year class of crappies in the future. The lake will go back to more balanced, but the crappie fishing will still be good, we just need another good spawn.