Cass Lake Area Panfish Report

After an already incredible two-day trip for smallies, eyes, and pike, a few friends and I decided to extend our stay a bit. After literally being sick of landing eyes from Upper Red, we decided to test our skills on a new lake that none of us had ever fished. Furthermore, we thought it would be fun to try for some panfish, as none of us had done that in too long a time.

We started our search on the DNR website after a long day of fishing Red, and looked for lakes with good substrate, weeds, and population/size-structure for bluegill. It was a bonus to find a few good lakes with crappies AND bluegill in good numbers and size. Some looks at a rough lake-depth map, as well as the air photos helped us sketch out a game-plan on paper. Our guess was that the gills would be on beds, and we’d wing it from there.

Again, sight-fishing was the order of the day in this crystal-clear lake. However, most of the beds we did see were either unoccupied, or with too dark a background to spot fish on them. The real surprise was the crappies. Where we found healthy cabbage adjacent to reed points, crappies were all around. We also found a few areas with downed logs and cabbage that held good numbers of crappies as well. Sunfish were found mostly on the first shoreline break, just inside of the cabbage. Many baits were used, but the clear winner was a black jig with black curly tail grub, hooked up to a spinner arm. Your avg. beetle spin really drove the crappies wild, as they made up nearly 3/4 of our catch. Almost all were between 11-12″, great fighters and agressive! The remainder were plump gills, still full of spawn that topped out at 9.5″. Just like with the crappies, the overall quality of the fish was great, with the almost all fish around the 9″ mark.

We felt like we had the lake to ourselves on this overcast and calm day, which made it the perfect culmination to perhaps the 3 best consecutive days of fishing I’ve ever had. All in all, we boated around 80 panfish, with all of us getting in on the action.

Thank you Jon and Mark, Jon esp. for the use of your boat and your knowledge of the area. Our trip to URL and the other lakes wouldn’t have been remotely as successful without you!