It was another great weekend on the ice. Adam, Jon and I got to spend a weekend fishing some of our "other" favorite lakes and we were joined by Paul Thorne from MarCum Technologies and his friend Jim. We started out on Red Lake Saturday evening and despite some finicky biters we were able to ice a nice pile of dandy crappies. This first picture is Paul Thorne with a dandy Red Lake slab.
We have several spots that have been producing huge numbers of crappies but they tend to get discovered. We decided to try to fish one of these spots Sunday AM before leaving for Winni and the action was great until the crowds discovered us. The next picture is Paul and Jim with a couple nice AM slabs. A few pictures and we were on the road down to Winni.
While I have been fishing Red quite a bit lately Adam has been putting equal time on Winni. We drove immediately to one of Adams favorite spots and seemed to have the lake to ourselves as there was no one within a mile of us. It took about 15 minutes of drilling holes and the Jumbo Perch were laying on the ice. We were targeting shallower water mostly in the 16-20 ft ranges on a steep break. We were all using Glow Devil jiggins spoons tipped with minnow heads. Overall the size quality was excellent and the action was just as good. The group photo is a couple Winni Jumbo Perch and 14 1/4 inch Red Lake Slabs.
Everyone wanted to take some fresh fish home to eat on this trip so we ended up keeping a few fish for everyone. The last picture is Paul and Jim with the fish we kept from the weekend. As I type this I am thinking about how good that meal of fish was last night…so good we are having them again tonight. See ya on the water!
I like to eat fish as much as anyone. This trip we did keep some fish and took a few different pictures of them. Here is another image to show you the quality of the fish we were catching.
Scott,how did you find the spot that you were on sat.nite and sun.morn.
The spot we fished Saturday evening is an area near the spots we had fished the previous weeks. This area is starting to get burned out by houses but we found a little piece of structure on this spot that no matter how much pressure it gets this piece of structure still holds fish.
Our Sunday AM spot is just 1/4 mile farther out then all our other spots. Basically we just jumped the pack. We had a few things we look for when we are looking for new spots but for the most part it takes a lot of hole drilling. No matter what, if you find a new spot and are catching fish, others will be on to you. It is tough to have a secret spot on a lake when there are 5000 other fisherman out there.
We are also fortunate to have a lot of good friends on the lake and near the lake and we work together on staying after the fish. However, it is amazing for such a big lake that 5ft can make a difference.
Scott,
Now that was really crazy running into you on sat. Fishing in the middle of no where…and poof-here comes the red ranger gear! Good to see you…we managed to get a few saturday, but none after dark…and drilled holes all day sunday with no luck.
That sounds about right, but you forgot to mention the walleye and tullibee action……..
Synthes, yes, that was crazy. You were fishing a very good area, you were just about 200ft off the hot spot. I was just driving around checking a few areas that we had been fishing to see how many people were in those areas and there you were. Small lake I guess.LOL
Adam, I kept LOW out of my report because we didn’t take any pictures. But, as Adam said, we did really get into the walleye and tullibee on LOW. We fished LOW from 9-noon on Saturday AM before heading back down to Red and the action was very good. I would guess between our goup we iced over 50 fish, but the size was small. We ended up with 15 keeper walleye and Sauger and also caught another 15-20 tullibee that we released. We were fishing the deep mud in 34 ft of water.
Nothing better then fishing LOW, Red & Winni in a weekend and doing well on each lake!
Scott,
Are you going to be on either Red or Winnie the weekend of March 4-6? I’ll be up with a group of four guys, but we don’t make the trip more than twice a year. That basically means were fishing a little blind. Do you prefer fishing the south shore, or do you fish the east shore? We generally go out of Rogers. I’d be willing to pay for some advise if you have any to offer.
My email address is [email protected] if you have some advise to offer. I noticed you mention structure. I didn’t know that existed on URL.
Junior
Scott,
thanks for the trip report and pics, YEP I’m now ruined now after last weekend. those slabs are amazing coming up the hole. Jack.
Jack, I agree, Red Lake can ruin a person. When you start comparing crappies that are 13 inches long you are talking about huge fish. Great Fun!!