It’s been a couple of years since I spent any time chasing panfish in northern St. Louis county. If you’ve been following the Rainy Lake reports you know there are some exceptional Crappies up that way. In addition, some of the smaller lakes have big Bluegills.
My younger daughter and her husband talked me into camping on one of my favorite lakes. Please understand that I haven’t slept in a tent since 1982! All I can say is that tent and air mattress technology has improved greatly in the last 25 years resulting in a good nights sleep.
This is very interesting fishing. The fish are shallow so you can try a variety of presentations. They’re cover oriented meaning you are “target shooting” all day. And they’re not everywhere so you have to hunt for them, adding to the adventure. We found a lot of Crappies in the 12-14 inch range and 10 inch Bluegills, as well as some Bass and the inevitable small Northerns.
The kids used a jig and bobber most of the time. One inch Tube jigs seemed to work as well as anything. Adding a small piece of crawler increased the number of Bluegill bites; I don’t think the Crappies cared one way or the other. When the fish were more aggressive a safety pin type spinner (i.e. Beetle Spin) caught a lot of fish. I was using my Limit Creek LCS69MLF medium light spinning rod with 4# mono and it worked very well for dropping the jig or spinner into tight spots and then working the fish back out of cover. Remember these fish are very shallow so you can’t crowd them without spooking them. Longer casts resulted in more fish.
My preferred presentation of course is with the fly rod. I didn’t see any surface activity and the water temperature was in the low 60’s so I didn’t try any topwaters. I did use small Woolly Buggers and Bead Head Nymphs and had great success. I’d estimate in a day and a half if fishing the flyrod accounted for well over 100 fish (including a 32 inch Northern that had me well into my backing). One of the attached pictures shows a nice ‘gill with my Nymph still in his mouth. If you ever want to learn about flyfishing, catching panfish is a good way to do it.
It was great fun fishing and camping with the kids. The smiles tell the story! It felt good to see some of my old stomping grounds again. Oh, one last note. My son-in-law is not the world’s most accurate caster…..but on the other hand he has a truly awesome ability to pull a bobber, split shot, and jig back up through a maze of tree branches and pop the whole thing free and clear. I couldn’t believe it!
Rootski
