Fishing report for 02/29-03/02-some pics

[GoggleEye]

Headed up to URL on Friday afternoon. Got up around midnight and drove out about 8.5 miles. Set up in 13 feet and dropped the house down. "Muleshack" tagged into a nice 14 in. crappie at around 1:00 a.m. (caught on a ritz cracker tipped with peanut butter....J/K ) A few walleyes made their way in the house and back down the hole throughout the night. Another flurry of action came by at around 4:00 a.m. with more walleyes being caught, some nice, some not. Most of these walleyes are pretty fat for only being around 13-18 inches. The future looks good for URL walleyes. The action died off around 7:30 a.m. and the daytime was spent searching around out of the house, but with no luck. We weren't even able to spot any fish on the camera during the day. That night the action picked up again around 5:00 p.m. with some more walleyes. I picked up a really nice 14.5 inch crappie around 7:30 p.m. The rest of the night was spent catching walleyes and a couple perch into the early morning hours of Sunday. The elusive crappies were no where to be found the rest of the trip and the snowstorm started to come in around mid-morning Sunday, so we called it quits and packed up. I guess to sum it up, fishing was decent during the nightime and pretty bad during the day! All our fish were caught on crappie minnows and small fatheads either on rattle reels or jigging sticks. Most of the jigs and spoons we were using were red glow, white glow, blue glow, or plain red hooks. Almost all fish were caught on bottom or off the bottom by 2 to 4 feet. Here is some pics of the two crappies we did manage. (sidenote- we were fishing for crappies, obviously we know walleye was closed.)

GoggleEye

My 14.5 inch crappie

Muleshack's 14 in. Crappie

[Bothun]

Great Slabs. Has the bite picked up at all?

[GoggleEye]

Bothun, can't really tell you whether the bite has picked up at all because I don't have anything to compare it to. This was my first time to URL. I can tell you that the crappies were very slow and the walleyes were biting pretty decent, but obviously walleye is closed now. We caught a couple perch and that was about it. If I would have to rate the panfish bite, I would say it is extremely slow right now. However maybe there are guys and gals slamming them out there right now as I speak, I however did not. Good luck.

[Ears]

Goggle, was that you on the 2nd road to the right off of hillmans in a gray lodge?? If so I was just to the south of you in the gold ice castle. total of 8 crappies, for 5 of us during the weekend.

[MuleShack]

You guys had the white ford and we had the white ram...yup that was us.

We seen you pull one out of a hole outside on Saturday mid day, then we got around to heading out and popping holes, but nothing even marked on the graph out side. all of our activity was at dark thru the night and up til 9:00ish in the AM.

Here is a pic of an Eye that was pretty much typical size up there that happened to jump our minnows. Had to do a CPR for the record.

[GoggleEye]

Ears, were you guys getting a lot of walleye action at night too?? We just could not connect with the schools of crappies. The crappies we got must have been loners, because we never got more than 1 at a time. The walleyes were definitely coming in schools though, usually around 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. and then again around 4:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. How were the sizes of the 8 crappies you guys got????

GE

[Ears]

No not a lot of walleyes, just a couple here and there. Yea all crappies were sproadic, I think 2 came out of the house. Not much on rattles at night, sat night we had a few more, but most of us were passed out cold the first night.

[FISHINGURU]

the one crappie we caught on a rattle reel on our last trip just made the rattle ding one time.....the first night we probably had 10-15 occasions where the rattle reels would ding just 1 time throughout the night but by time you got to it nothing was there...finally we got a 13 1/2 incher up the hole.

makes me wonder how many of them light biting crappies we missed.

[Random guy]

Many of the crappies cught lately have been by accident. Guys go to check the bait and its heavy. Fish was just sitting their and not moving the whole time.

[FISHINGURU]

i can believe that...thats pretty much what they were doing to us during the night...the one crappie we did catch on the rattle reel was at midnight.

just like that perch that came onto my cousins cam he had down watching his bait...the perch came in and took his jig and bait on the cam...we look over at his bobber and it didn't even budge but the perch had the whole bait in it's mouth plain as day on the cam so he set the hook and pulled the perch up....the perch wasn't even moving and could of spit the bait whenever it wanted and you would of never known.

[GoggleEye]

After using my camera for the last few years, there is a lot more of that happening than you think. If I can use a camera, it will always be right by my side. I would take a camera over a vex or marcum any day of the week. I have caught so many fish that I never would of even knew were there because of my cam.

[Random guy]

Ya know goggle eye the camera has really played big a roll this year in picking out presentations for me. With the advancements Marcum made in dark water technology this year I have been able to view crappies later into the dark hours. Many times these fish come up and just sniff looking like a fairly aggressive fish on the flasher but the camera will give you the true mood and identification of those marks. Small walleye, perch or crappie and you can see just how thse fish reacting to changes in the presentation. I had one fish that made five passes at my bait all three to four minutes apart. Without seeing the fish attack then sit off to the side then come back in again I would have thought I landed on a small school and not one very determed fish. The camera saved me from wasting more time looking for the rest of the school because the info the flasher gave me was multiple fish.

[shaky legs2]

Jonny, Was their very little wind this year when the ice froze for the first time? We noticed on our friend's camera when we were up 3 weeks ago that the pictures were very clear but maybe it had to do withe being on a slightly harder bottom. Also is there a lot of forage in the lake this winter and is this affecting the crappie bite?

[kelly-p]

There was a lot of wind during freeze up. We're guessing the clearer water is from the drought. Very little runoff of bog stained water entering the lake the past 2 years.

[Random guy]

The clear water is actaully due to low water. With the water tables so low we have very little water flowing into the lake. This includes both the famous red stained bog water and fertile water from the backwaters of incoming rivers and streams. Notice Red Lake is not Red this year? Very little bog stain present.

(Looks like Kelly and I posted at the same time, of course I got side tracked mid post and he beat me...even with "feeding chickens" typing. )

[GoggleEye]

Hey Johnny, Just out of curiosity what model marcum camera do you prefer?? I am looking to purchase a marcum as I do not like a lot of things about my aqua-view. One of them being the very thing you mentioned.....low-light performance. I can't wait to upgrade.

GE

[Random guy]

I have had the chance to use the 460, 560 and the new 820. Of course the new one is coolest and the most exspensive. (cool stuff always cost more, hate that)

The 560 is a great camera, love the auto pan feature but it is half of the new 820 with its big screen, Manta camera with Darkwater Technology and on screen menu. I can say I am very pleased with the new Marcum camera, mainly because I can still use it after dusk when the fish are actaully biting. What really seperates it is the ability to fine tune the contrast, brighness and sharpness on the screen and the UV light has three settings as does the blue light. You can really dial it in to meet the conditions. For an example of clarity in Red Lake look at the show Hunt Fish TV did on Upper Red Lake, all of that underwater footage was taken using the Marcum camera, some of it shot at night.

Outdoors with Jonny P TV/Radio

[GoggleEye]

Thanks for the info. and advice on the marcums. I'll have to check out the new models. Very cool TV show you guys did.

GE

[mike morris]

Marcum really has some cool cameras out. Wish I had the money to get its latest model.