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Otter Tail Reports *****UPDATED*****


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Hey guys,

Time for the annual family trip to your beautiful neck of the woods (27 years I think), specifically Otter Tail. Any recent reports on the fishing there? It looks like it has been a little slow the past few weeks. We always fish the 18' to 35' mid-lake humps in the mornings and during the days with lindy rigs tipped with leeches. For the night fishing we usually troll on the deep side of the shallow weed lines with shallow running Rapalas.

Any other presentation / bait working better? As always, any assistance is greatly appreciated and I will provide a full report upon my return! grin.gifgrin.gifgrin.gifgrin.gif

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No one fishing Otter Tail? confused.gifconfused.gif Not looking for specific spots just a fishing report. grin.gif

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I haven't hit OT in a long time as I've found a consistent bite elsewhere. grin.gif

I heard OT has a tough bite going, but that's all hearsay. Hopefully someone will chime in.

Good luck and enjoy the vacation.

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Thanks for the reply Chuck. Hopefully it'll pick up a bit and I'll have a good report for ya when I get home. grin.gif

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aint heard of any one catching fish over there but if you bowfish we have been hammerin the carp and bullheads west battle has to good of a walleye bite going on right now for me to think about tryin ottertail any time soon

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  • 2 weeks later...

As promised, here is my very unprofessional fishing report from my vacation at Otter Tail last week.

We had some luck trolling Rapala's in the 8'-10' range early in the morning and in the late evening / night. Seemed the bite was pretty sporadic and you picked up a few, but had to wade through a lot of rock bass. The largest was a nice 19 1/2" that was CPR'd.

The best luck we had was the bottom bouncer / spinner / crawler set-up over the mid-lake humps. It seemed like we would pick up 1-3 fish on each hump, and then it would kind of shut-off. We jumped around a lot from hump to hump, and always seemed to get a few at each spot.

Fishing both methods produced a LOT of small walleye's in the 9" to 12" range.

All in all, we were very happy with how the fish were biting, and kept just enough to have a nice family fish fry.

On an unrelated matter, are the Water Patrol guys Deputy Sheriff's with the Otter Tail County Sheriff's Department, or are they specifically just Water Patrol agents supervised by the Sheriff's Department?

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Otter Tail County Water Patrol is contacted through the Sheriffs office for Water Patrol during spring and summer months. They patrol over 1,000 lakes within Otter Tail County.

Some of their responsibilities include:

Assisting with permit requests

Taking care of complaints and questions related to jet skiers and boaters

Taking care of water related injury accidents

Working with the Public Safety Dive Team in rescue and recovery of near drowning and drowning victims

Checking for the proper number of flotation devices in a boat

Checking for current registrations on boats and other water craft

Teaching water safety

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