Farm Island info

[lotsofish]

I will be staying at Farm Island Lake this weekend. How's the fishing? Eyes, pike, bass, panfish? From the DNR site it looks like Little Pine is a bit better for panfish. Is it possible to channel between the two lakes?

Any general info to get me started would be appreciated. Thanks!

[fishuhalik]

I know it's a good eye lake but they can be hard to find. Never fished it but my soon to be bro in law has a cabin on it. He says he does better in the winter for some reason. don't know much about pannies, I hear they're in there

[lotsofish]

We did pretty good on catching fish. It rained on Saturday morning so I wasn't able to get out early. I took the kids out in the afternoon and we did find some nice sunnies. To answer my own question, it is possible to go from Farm Island to Little Pine lake through the channel, but you have to have a boat that can get through about 1.2 feet of water right now. We found the fish right in the channel in the deeper (like 2 - 2.3 feet) areas. Several bigger pannies were caught. We were mostly using 1" and 2" plastic grubs. A chunk of nightcrawler would get you a fish in about 2 seconds, but we caught the bigger ones on the plastics. The biggest was a pumpkinseed that went just over 9" (and was released). Several other 9" bluegills were also caught. We kept about 20 medium sized fish for dinner.

I went out early on Sunday with the intent of finding the eyes. I tried a bunch of different things, but I didn't find them anywhere. I did however find a spot where I landed 7 largemouth (up to about 2 1/2 pounds) and about 12 huge rock bass in an hour. This was a rocky area in about 2.5-4 feet from 5:00-6:00am. After 6:00 when it got a bit brighter out the bite slowed down, but I think they just moved out to a nearby 5-6 feet area that was still rocky. I moved on to try to find the eyes (unsuccessfully). For the next couple hours I was out I landed a few more largemouth and couldn't keep the rockies off my line. I also caught several northerns, 1 went about 3 pounds, but most were just snakes.

The rock bass in this lake are really big, if you're into that kind of thing. I caught many in the 11 inch range and the biggest topped out at just over 12 inches. If someone was to put in enough time, I bet there is a state record fish in there (but it would be a rock bass )

[palisade1kid]

Well if you were in the rockies the walleyes shouldn't have been to far away.

Great report. It sounds like you were busy rearin !

[Roosterslayer05]

If you were fishing in water any shallower than 12 feet you were too shallow for the eye's, try deeper next time say 15-25

[Matt Breuer]

FIL does have some great bass fishing! There are some great slop spots there for some good topwater blow ups!

The pike are abundant in the cabbage, and the 'eyes follow the same path a lot of times. Fishing the cabbage weeds in 9-13 feet is a good bet pitching jigs and minnows. Rigging leeches off the breaks is also a good bet, like Roosterslayer said, 14-20 feet...

[lotsofish]

Thanks, that's good info. Yeah I did try a few things out in the 14-18 foot range, but I didn't hook into the eyes at all. I couldn't find many structure areas much deeper than that anywhere I checked, so I didn't try much deeper than that 18 foot range. I did figure that with the clearer water they might like to hang out a bit deeper, but I was out before the sun came up and with overcast/windy conditions, so I figured it would be a perfect time to try in the 3-8 foot range. No eyes, but I sure hammered the largemouth and rockies in there though. Good times!

[Dale]

I hit the lake last night. We went out from about 8:30 to 10:30 and caught 4 eyes and 2 Rockies. The biggest eye was 14".

[palisade1kid]

Ya hit her during prime time Dale.

I'm thinking with this front coming through you should go back as they might really turn on.

[Dale]

We hit them in 14' of water just off the weed line. I went out into the 18' to 25' range but couldn't get a bit or graf anything.

[palisade1kid]

That's where I've been marking them on 3 other lakes.