Lake Phalen, ST Paul Mn

Is it legal to use a gas auger on Phalen lake?

Been doing it for years.

-J.

Are there any lakes that don’t allow gas augers? I have never heard of this before.

FDR

This lake does not allow any gas powered vehicles or boats.

Where can I access the lake?

access is in NW corner of lake

Thanks Bruce!

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Where can I access the lake?

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The entire lake is in a park. You can access it anywhere you want. You can’t tresspass over any private land. There are at least 7 different parking lots around the lake. Plus you can park on most side streets around the lake.

-J.

Up here for a month in St.Paul I’m pretty desperate for a walleye and this lake and Gervais look promising. Any tips?

ProStaffSteve wrote:

Up here for a month in St.Paul I’m pretty desperate for a walleye and this lake and Gervais look promising. Any tips?

There are better options. I suggest looking over the fish surveys on DNR lakefinder to see which ones have promising numbers, then hit those lakes during primetime hours. That should get you in the right direction.

Or just go to Mille Lacs.

It’s been 15 years so I’m sure things have changed but I fished there a lot when I lived on the east side. There’s a deep hole straight out from the boat house on the west side that produced pretty well for crappies and eyes, never much for size and fishing that deep you can’t really c&r. There’s also a saddle between the north & south halves of the lake that could be productive. Really nice weed bed on the south end for gills but they were very stunted and you’d have to sort through 20 small ones for every decent fish.
Be VERY cautious on the north end, the depth is ~100’ and it never freezes well.

WinnebagoViking wrote:

There’s also a saddle between the north & south halves of the lake that could be productive.

Good area to start looking.

-J.

mahtofire14 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>ProStaffSteve wrote:</div>
Up here for a month in St.Paul I’m pretty desperate for a walleye and this lake and Gervais look promising. Any tips?

There are better options. I suggest looking over the fish surveys on DNR lakefinder to see which ones have promising numbers, then hit those lakes during primetime hours. That should get you in the right direction.

Or just go to Mille Lacs.

I deal with time constraints. I hear Minnetonka can be pretty decent, but I don’t have time or resources to get out there. Thanks though! Mille Lacs is where I plan to travel on any full days off!

WinnebagoViking wrote:

It’s been 15 years so I’m sure things have changed but I fished there a lot when I lived on the east side. There’s a deep hole straight out from the boat house on the west side that produced pretty well for crappies and eyes, never much for size and fishing that deep you can’t really c&r. There’s also a saddle between the north & south halves of the lake that could be productive. Really nice weed bed on the south end for gills but they were very stunted and you’d have to sort through 20 small ones for every decent fish.
Be VERY cautious on the north end, the depth is ~100’ and it never freezes well.

When you say not much size, like crappie top out @ 9in and walleyes top @14″? I could work with that. I’m sure it has changed a bit. Is this post referring to Phalen or Gervais?

I was referring to Phalen. The saddle area is where I would look for walleyes.

-J.

For what it’s worth, I thought the same thing last winter about both of these lakes and spent 2 straight weeks fishing them hard. The saddle on Phalen produced some 1/2 decent northerns on tip-ups, and a couple of okay walleyes (15-18″). I only caught one walleye on Gervais in like 3 days of ice time. In terms of panfish, as others said, extremely stunted (like a million 6″ ‘gills). Walleye fishing the metro lakes is tough, because these fish don’t follow the same patterns/tendencies as naturally reproducing lakes in other parts of the state. You’ll find some of decent size, but don’t expect hot and heavy action, it will be VERY sporadic.

dexknows wrote:

For what it’s worth, I thought the same thing last winter about both of these lakes and spent 2 straight weeks fishing them hard. The saddle on Phalen produced some 1/2 decent northerns on tip-ups, and a couple of okay <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>walleyes (15-18″). I only caught one <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>walleye on Gervais in like 3 days of ice time. In terms of panfish, as others said, extremely stunted (like a million 6″ ‘gills). <em class=”ido-tag-em”>Walleye fishing the metro lakes is tough, because these fish don’t follow the same patterns/tendencies as naturally reproducing lakes in other parts of the state. You’ll find some of decent size, but don’t expect hot and heavy action, it will be VERY sporadic.

I’m not going to name the lake because I put in so much work into figuring out the walleye bite on it. But, I have spent the last two years working on the walleye bite on this HIGHLY fished metro lake, and have recently gotten to the point where I can typically go out for primetime evening bite and get 3-5 fish each time out. Last weekend myself and two other guys caught 13 walleye in 4 hours. It probably won’t happen again and I’m sure when I go out there this weekend I will be back to 2-3 fish or they will have completely moved from the spot.

Moral of this long winded post is if you are fishing metro lakes, try and put the time and effort into learning a lake. It’s a pain, it’s frustrating but I can tell you it’s very rewarding when you finally figure it out.

My post is about Phalen. And, yes, that was about the top end end of the eyes and crappies. Again, though, I lived and fished there quite a while ago. I had little kids at the time so I was limited to short trips and stayed close to home but I did get out there 2-3 evenings a week and learned the lake pretty well.

Gervais goes through typical cycles and once it hits an upward cycle it gets pounded hard because it more accessible to vehicle traffic. I’ve personally never done very well there.