Knife Lake Panfish.

Stopped by Knife lake north of Mora on the way home from LOTWs yesterday to try for some spring crappies. Found a bunch of active perch in shallow bay and one decent sunnie. Water temps seemed to be right with them running 57 degrees with the sun in the bay to 51 mid lake. There didnt seem to be much weed growth yet which made me think we might of been a little early for the bite. It wouldn’t surprised me to see the sunnies and crappies really get going very soon. Maybe with in days or the next warm sunny day.

Sorry Mike. There was a deep winter kill, no more fish.

My brother hit it last weekend and reported the same. Their window for fattening up to spawn has shrunk, so maybe there will be exceptional panfishing this year.

I wish the crappies weren’t hit so hard late 90s and early 2000s. There are plenty of crappies still, but the sizes aren’t the same. It actually has probably less to do with pressure and more with the ecology as the lake was reclaimed.

If you ever watched the people lined up shoulder to shoulder from the pier all the way around to the access you might think pressure has something to do with it.

I don’t think size or numbers kept plays much with the group either.

Quote:

---

If you ever watched the people lined up shoulder to shoulder from the pier all the way around to the access you might think pressure has something to do with it.

I don’t think size or numbers kept plays much with the group either.

---

True. We avoid that area like the plague. Someone is going to get shot one of these springs. I can tell you it has not had an affect on numbers. And we have caught crappies on just about every bass lure I have chucked.

After moving down to the cities for college in the early 90’s Knife has always been a favorite lake to hit early in spring on my way back up to Malmo… It’s too bad how overfished the West side of the lake by the pier is in Spring, but I always grab a canoe so we can pull right under the bridge and we’ve never had a problem finding a good batch of eaters.

I grew up in the area and Knife was the lake where I really found out how much I love fishing. I can’t believe how many people drive hours to fish from shore on knife lake. I ran into a group as I was loading the boat up and they had a bucket of fish sitting there, let’s just say they were not too picky. Luckily 85% of the boats were also packed on the pier so we were able to find plenty of other spots to find fish with no other boats close by. Knife has had many ups and downs as far as fish populations in the past few decades, the walleyes are there but not like they used to be. I hope to get out there again sometime in the next week.

Im pretty sure they are biting….

Wouldn’t two lines be grand?

Wow. When was that photo taken Chris? Thats a little crowded. Think I would find someplace else to fish.

Quote:

---

Wow. When was that photo taken Chris? Thats a little crowded. Think I would find someplace else to fish.

---

Thats nothing. They are shoulder to shoulder from the left of the photo over to the bridge. Then a few also try the area by the access.

It looks like the pier is sinking to the left? That’s a lot of people.

meh, looks like there’s plenty of room on the right side there. That area of the lake has never been a favorite of mine