fishing reports 2020 - Upper Red Lake Fishing Reports (URL)

[magic_minnow]

Fished 8am-6pm 1/1, caught only 4, largest at 19".

[jc_higgins]

Quote:

As I understand it propane quits making pressure at -27 and stops at -40 unless heat is applied. Seeing as we were at -37 on shore and usually the lake is 6 to 7 degrees colder we were in a bad situation right at sunrise across URL. We try to keep 2 full 100 pounders on each house before a night like that and we had 2 stoves shut down even with that. I can not imagine what it was like with a wheelhouse and 20 pounders. After a weekend like that I don't care how the fishing was, I'm just relieved everybody came off the lake OK.

Amen to that, Kelly. There was some pretty tense moments that night, but we didn't want to pull the plug and abandon everything to freeze up, but we were pretty close a few times. I made sure the truck was warm and ready to go if we needed it. The next morning I noticed I had a nice ugly goose egg blister on the end of my finger due to a crappy pair of mitts that have a slit for your trigger finger. Nice frost bite memento from URL to remind me to be more prepared for adverse conditions. Like I said, fishing was good, and luckily we have a happy ending to a story, but everyone needs to have a backup plan when you go onto a body of water that size in tough conditions.

[Bigtime22]

What does everyone think about this weekend, do you think it will pick up? I was hoping to head up, don't know if it is worth it yet. I would assume that with rising temps, there should be a fair shot at an improvement.

[Jim Panfish Uran]

Couldn't be any worse than last week.

[JimBuck]

I'm heading up on Thursday. I'd say if you have the chance to go, do it. This weekend looks to be shaping up for some decent weather if this high pressure system will ever go away.

[Jim Panfish Uran]

I may be up there too, just kind of watching things, seeing where the bite is.

[ENMIFDAD]

Heading up Thursday as well. Plan was to run up to LOW on Friday then back to Red on Friday night. Hoping the bite is too good to leave!

[walleyeRyummy]

fished tonight 4-8pm..........had a great time with my wife and kids.....only caught one walleye who conveniently fell off at the hole as he was too small to keep ...anyways, aside from the non-existant bite(we wern't even marking fish on the vex) gotta give kudos to kevin at westwind for bring us a set of rca cables...we left ours at home and if i didnt have them to hook up the dvd player the two year old would have ran us ragged

[SHANTY]

i will be there this weekend too. Hope the warm weather turns them on... it is turning me on:)

Upper Red or Bust!

[DrStizo]

four of us fished a sleeper out of portaville Jan 3rd-4th. Very nice house, plenty of storage and were able to listen to the vikes game on the radio. Unfortunately the fishing was the worst i have seen there in all my years fishing URL. Thats why they call it fishing and not catching We manged to catch 3 walleyes, 2 were under 12inches and 1 was 17 inches so we ended the trip with a big goose egg. A couple of weeks ago we had gone up with our portables and went of JR's and absolutley hammered them, but 3 of our guys had never stayed in a sleeper and wanted to try it. As we drove away i told them, you dont leave fish to catch fish. No one checked on us until we were leaving but i think it might be my fault because i told the guide he didnt need to babysit us, all in all we had fun but.......

[Portavilla]

The fishing in a couple of spots slowed down and one area went basically dead. The good news is we found a real good spot and spent the last couple of days moving to it. We have just six more to move and should be in good shape by the end of the day. The fishing here has been fantastic. Its been a couple of long days but the hard work paid off with everyone doing very good to excellent on the fishing in the spot. We are going to move a few of the longer faces in the dead area and try to put some smiles on them.

The cold weather made things more difficult and working outside running the boys on three hours sleep a day added a little bit of contention, so we went to a mandatory lunch time and we went up to Westwinds and had a good dinner. After we got over the hump we sent the kid home to spend sometime with the girl he’s head over heels with so he put it in high gear to get there. I will have to get him a cape for Christmas next year. Dallas is running like a machine, just stay out of his way and I am in true Roman form conquering new territory every day planting my flag everywhere.

[opsirc]

A couple of us are heading up saturday. What has everyone been using for lures?

thanks

[RogersResort]

From what I have been hearing glow red and glow blue have been out producing just about everything else. There has been a fairly good night bite just about everywhere, the deeper water 15+ feet has seen a OK day time bite. The "center bar" has had some decent northern pike action during the day and a OK night time walleye bite.

Jerry@ROGERS'

[kelly-p]

This is really strange but when I talked to Buddy today he said that nobody has even tried fishing beyond 5.2 miles??????? I wish I wouldn't have had so much to get done today. Miles of clean virgin ice to check out with no other fishermen around. I think everybody got spoiled by by the good fishing from 1 1/2 miles to 3 miles and have been staying there. I would guess now that the action is slowing in that area and we have a little better ice there will be a pretty big migration to the west this week. Yesterday we finally trusted the ice enough to get a couple houses to where we usually START the year. Miles of unfished ice ahead of us.

[woodman]

I am glad we can do the scouting for you this weekend. I am all packed up and ready to hit the road in the am. I will call when I arrive. Looking forward to a great weekend with you guys as always! See ya in the morning!

[kelly-p]

woodman I want you to know that we have been using the latest and best technology we have to find good fishing. Today some guys in a wheelhouse had tried a place along a new road and it didn’t go real good so they were looking for a new place to try. There was an area of about 3 square miles that hadn’t been fished all year so I suggested that they try it right out there in that big empty spot. I was going to plow a trail out there for them so I let “Fred” the dog out of the plow truck in case I ran into any weak ice. They asked if Fred could find fish. I told them I didn’t know as usually he only found trouble but we'd try. As I plowed out into that big opening Fred was running along side the plow truck when suddenly he ran off a ways and ,,, to put it in nice terms.... left a pile. The fishermen saw that and decided that they wanted to fish right where Fred “marked” the spot. When I came off the lake tonight I checked on them and they had more fish then anybody else I had talked to.

[SHANTY]

woodman I want you to know that we have been using the latest and best technology we have to find good fishing. Today some guys in a wheelhouse had tried a place along a new road and it didn’t go real good so they were looking for a new place to try. There was an area of about 3 square miles that hadn’t been fished all year so I suggested that they try it right out there in that big empty spot. I was going to plow a trail out there for them so I let “Fred” the dog out of the plow truck in case I ran into any weak ice. They asked if Fred could find fish. I told them I didn’t know as usually he only found trouble but we'd try. As I plowed out into that big opening Fred was running along side the plow truck when suddenly he ran off a ways and ,,, to put it in nice terms.... left a pile. The fishermen saw that and decided that they wanted to fish right where Fred “marked” the spot. When I came off the lake tonight I checked on them and they had more fish then anybody else I had talked to.

do u have GPS coordinates for that fresh pile

glad to hear people are still catching them. we are also heading up firday morning. Will make use to stop in

[SHANTY]

How have the chubbys been doing? I am guessing slow do to the weather

[woodman]

KELLY- Sounds good to me, I have a feeling that you know which house to put by that new marking system! Since they are so full of it always, they will be right at home with that! See you in a few hours, well maybe a little more!

[bak2MN]

Jigging dont seem to work.

[usmtsrocks]

Havent seen too many reports the last few days, My buddy and I are heading up tomorrow morning to stay in one of the Waskish Minnow Station sleepers for the first time and we cant wait!! Hope the bite is on!

[Big Daddy 37]

Three of us fished on the South end in a rental from Chad.

Action was pretty slow at night, but managed to catch pretty good numbers during the day.

We ended up with about 30 fish up the hole (many over the slot) and missed about as many because of the light biters.

Dead stick with small shiners or fattys were the only thing working. Red hook seemed to help a bit as well.

Left the ice with three nice limits of fish and another round of good memories.

Thanks as always to Chad for a nice location and for stopping in on numerous occations to check on how we were doing. Two of us are planning on returning with our sons in a couple weeks and will for sure be going through Chads guide service once again (if there are openings midweek).

Best of luck to you all!!

[Quackaddict9]

Jigging dont seem to work.

never has for me up there, always been a "dead stick" bite but the crappies liked it when you moved up a little bit. Not so much for the walleyes though.

[Beeber]

Eleven of us fished out of the South end with Chad Benson on the night of 1/5. We had a steady bite with each of the three houses in the 20 to 30 fish range. We had a nice meal on the lake and enough for everyone to take a limit home. Four of us stayed for another night (1/6) and had a great time. Fishing was decent with around 30 fish through the hole. We should have had a lot more but missed a bunch at the hook set or just as we got them to the bottom of the ice. Really light biters. We had a few over 17" with one nice 25" on the morning of the 7th. Dead stick was the winner by far and glow green seemed to be the color. Not normal for URL in my experience. Usually it has been glow red. The night bite was slower then the day bite with the best coming around mid to late afternoon.

I hope to make it up there again yet this year. Chad's houses were really nice, clean, and well setup. He (as always) was a great host.

Thanks Chad and see you again soon (I hope)

[mediocrates67]

i'm trying to figure out if we're going late tonight or tomorrow morning. are the fish biting early in the morning?

[opsirc]

how is the ice, and would a person be able to get off the plowed roads with 4x4 pickup?

thanks

[theghost_03]

The ice was fine, we went out 4.5 miles and had well over 2' of ice. We managed to pull out about 30 fish and get a good meal. The night fishing was absolutely dead. We went out on Hillman's road. We caught about everything during the day with chubby darters, red, and only jigging. Two fish was it through the rattle reel holes. The fish were not very agressive, hopefully the warm weather changes things next week.

[Beeber]

The fish started to bite around 8am as the sun came up but the bite was the best in the late afternoon. The ice was good and there were some trucks driving "off Road" but you would need to be carefull I think.

[Mell]

Drove up last night out of west wind and decidedto travel southward towards Rogers so went off road with 20 ft ice castle. Needless to say very interesting mile

and a half. Got setup and fished till 2am no fish. Woke up and started catching

fish. Walked outside to find greater Minnesota rental outfitters dog eating three of our

frozen

pizzas. He brought more

out and made good. Fishing is great! No jigging cuz they WILL spook. If you go off road make sure your partner can shovel. Very disappointed that if a guy forgets to bring a garbage bag he gets told there is a store down the road after I paid ten dollars to use access(west wind). Bite was best mid afternoon to night.

[Portavilla]

It was nice having Bill come up with the things we needed he put the house back in good shape and we got everything back in one camp. With getting all caught up we took in some showers and got something to eat. The fishermen have all been pleased and are catching fish.

The fisherman came in around us and we plowed quite a few spots and those that came in on there own went to the preferred side of the road and I got nothing but thumbs up from everyone. We even gave some snow plow rides and widened the road another fifteen feet without as much as one complaint on a Friday with everyone coming in for the weekend. The road is in awesome shape for the next blizzard and a special thanks to all that found the request doable.

For the first time in two weeks its time for a couple of drinks.