Spent the day on Lake Zumbro with Mike Smith from Hooked On Fishing catching bullgills, and I mean big fat bluegills. Wow! Some of these babies were thick like I’ve never seen them before.
There were some nice crappies in the 9-11 inch size mixed in along with lots of whitebass and even a perch to make for a very fun day. This 2nd picture will show you the thickness of alot of the gills we were catching.
The technique used today was a very simple one. We were using Mini-Mites tipped with a waxie and held as vertical as possible. When you felt a tick you needed to set the hook right away in order to catch them. There wasn’t much wind so the electric trolling motor was used to slightly vary postions when the bite would slow down to relocate the fish. Depths of water fished ranged from 14-26 feet.
The last pic is of Mike with a crappie caught on the same presentation. With fall here and not many pleasure boats out now the lake mostly belongs to the fisherman which equals lots of fun on the water. The fish are hungry, the bite is good, and its ”fishin time.” I hope you too will spend time on the water enjoying the fall fishing bite before even thinking about putting the boat away for the year.
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Thanks, Bill
Thanks for the great pictures, looks like a lot of fun!
I’m started learning crappie/blugill fishing this year. I still can’t consistently catch them throughout the year, but am getting better. However, the last few weeks have gotten tough on all lakes I fish. When fishing in the 14-26 ft water are you over any type of structure and cover or are you just looking for fish on the graph?
I’m used to fishing weeds, wood, etc for bass so crappie/blugill fishing is quite different with the open water. The weed edges were producing fish throughout the summer, but the fish appear to have moved.
Great report!
Lake Zumbro is a wider deeper part of the Zumbro River above the dam so theres no real weedline like in a lake. These fish are suspended over deeper water and will show up on your fish locator. You have to believe what your locator shows you [baitfish and fish] and fish an area where it shows you fish. Keep at it and find the fish and then fish them and you will catch them.
Thanks, Bill
I was out on Lake Zumbro about a week ago. Spent the evening slow trolling with a white jig head, small plastic grub and small silver spinner. Then I added a chunk of crawler and we had plenty of bites from nice gills. Also many striped bass and a couple of nice crappies. It was a great evening with lots of action…..just ran out of sunlight.
Welcome. Great to have you with us. Please feel free to share and post all you want. Trolling roostertails or just plain crappie hair jigs works well too for whitebass [stripers], crappies and gills. Lots of fish but as you said ”not enough daylight” and the weekends are tooooooo far apart.
Thanks, Bill
Click here to go to the Rochester Area Lakes Forum
Yes, it’s getting dark waaay to early. It’s really hard to find time to do small game hunting and fishing in one week.
Thanks for the tips! There are some bodies of water like Lake Zumbro around here and I’ll see if I can make things work for the crappies and blugills in open water.
This website is a great to have a place to share fishing!