Lake George Crappies – St. Croix County, WI

Saturday afternoon I had some free time and a son who wanted to catch some fish. Two good things to have in my book! I wanted to fish a lake that would give us some good action and the size of the fish really wasn’t a factor for this outing. If you’ve been reading some of the recent reports from fellow IDA Staffers, you know that Red Lake is famous for it’s monster slab crappies. Well, in our neck of the woods, George is kind of famous for it’s micro slab crappies. We found some excellent crappie action, and to our surprise, the overall size wasn’t too bad either.

I fished George quite a bit last winter and always found the action to be quite good. However, the size of the fish was the only downfall. In fact, I very rarely put anything on the ice that I would consider a keeper or frying pan worthy. I have talked to other people who fish this lake and they also echo many of my same findings. Many people fish for a variety reasons and I often get wrapped up in the competitiveness of tournament fishing. It’s important from time to time that we remember what it is that often got us interested and has kept us hooked on this great pastime – having fun! This trip was to be just for fun. Besides having a good time with my son, we also found the size of the crappies to be a little better than what I caught last year. The one pictured here is an eleven incher that I caught with a friend on my return trip on Sunday. A friend of mine hadn’t ice fished in almost twenty years, so I took him down on Sunday to enjoy a day on the ice

The fish we were catching were in approx. 22’ of water. Using your electronics was once again a key to catching these fish. Both days we marked a lot of fish, but many of them were not interested in what we were offering. The key was to watch the fish as they moved through on the flasher. They would come up off the bottom and slowly rise towards the top. What we were looking for is those fish that would stop and suspend for a while at a given depth. I assume these fish were stopping to feed!?!? We would then set our bobbers at the depth these fish tended to stop at. We would also jig with another pole at the various depths that other fish would suspend at, almost targeting individual fish at times. Most of the feeding fish would suspend from 2’ to 6’ off the bottom, but we did catch a few suspended as high as 10’ to 14’ from the bottom. A glow teardrop with crappie minnows below an ice-buster bobber was one of the productive presentations. The jigging presentation was a glow teardrop with a waxie or a crappie minnow. We experienced our best bite between 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.

Not only did my son and I have a good time on Saturday, but it also allowed me the opportunity to teach him a little about selective harvest. We caught a variety of sizes that day, some we kept and some we tossed back. It was neat to hear him say that one goes back or that one goes in the bucket. He actually did a pretty good job of judging size, but I did need to make a few vetoes and let a few go he thought we should keep. George is a small lake that receives a lot of wintertime fishing pressure. It is important to practice selective harvest on an impoundment like this. Selective harvest allows us to keep some to eat while releasing others to sustain the population. I don’t want to come across as preaching or as all knowing because I enjoy a good fish fry as much as the next person. I just know I had a great time fishing George this weekend and hope lakes like it are around for me to take my grandkids to for a fun day of fishing!