New to Rochester – Looking for Fishing Spots

Hey everyone, I just moved to Rochester from NW Iowa and I was wondering what lakes or rivers are decent fishing nearby.
I fish for really anything so any help would be appreciated!

Foster arend for Trout.
Chesterwood for Crappie,sunny,bass
Willow creek for crapie,sunny
Zumbro lake for everything
45 mins away: Miss river.(redwing,lake pepin,wabasha,alma float).
45 mins away: Clear lake in waseca MN, or Faribault,MN

Brandon, glad you found us and welcome to IDO. I’m sure someone will be able to hook you up soon.

A great multi species run is to rent canoes from below the dam at Lake Zumbro and float down the river. Can be excellent fishing —

Great suggestions have been made already on here and I’ll add my take on them.

A lot of the local area Rochester ponds aren’t bad but can be very crowded and over-fished. From what I’ve read Olmsted County is the only county in MN without a natural lake in it, so when people without boats want to fish they crowd up the few local ponds.

Chester Woods is a county park with a decent sized body of water and I’d recommend renting a canoe and going out on there; you can find fish where a guy would normall expect to find fish.

Otherwise like “One” said there are a batch of lakes west of you in South-Central MN. Faribault has quite a few lakes in the area.

All the above Rochester-area fishing spots also work OK for ice fishing, just tend to be overcrowded just like during summer.

Brandon, do you intend on shore fishing,using a boat or both ?

I am also from the area and know it well.

You have PM ….look for flashing flag up by your sign in name(top right)and click on it !

There are numerous trout streams less than an hour drive from Rochester that provide great fishing and the scenery is unbeatable.

I forgot to mention that there’s a regional thread for the Rochester area, it’s kind of a ghost town so feel free to post there, I like to hear from the SE MN community!