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

[SHANTY]

Looks like some weather is coming in and temps look like they are going to drop 20 degrees or so. Think this will screw with the fish? Lock jaw?

[Acemac]

Just returned from Red today from a two day, two nighter. Would like to thank Kelly and Jonny P for a very good time and some hilarious red lake stories. Sounded like it was a tough bite where we were so we were very happy with our results. We will be back again for sure! My buddy and I fished from tuesday afternoon to thursday morning. Fish caught- 21 Eyez, kept 10 over a two day period. 8 were too big and 3 were very small. Biggest was 20" and we had a giant that would have gone mid 20's plus snap a rattle wheel line about 5:00 am thursday morning. We also missed around a dozen fish. Also caught 1 nice 13 and half inch crappie(and missed another), 3 perch, and one TINY 10" northern. Almost EVERY fish was on a slip bobber or rattle wheel. Jigging didnt do much of anything when we marked fish. Jig color didnt seem to matter that much. Midnight to 9am and 4 to 6pm the bite was steady. During the daylight it was dead! As a matter of fact, we didnt mark hardly a single fish from 11am to about 9 or 10pm wednesday. AND we went outside the house searching for them!

Thanks again Jonny and Kelly, Brian and I had a great time and we'll be back again!

wow sounds like the bite sure was slow.... come fish tonka with me I would be super hapy at 20 eyes lol you red lake folks crack me up!

[YiGGiN4SLoBS]

It was slow at times, but hot at others. Its ice fishing! Your not going to destroy fish every single time you hit the ice! Hmmmmm.... lets see, go to a lake in the middle of the twin cities concrete jungle and fish with you or go to the north country and fish the mighty red... I think ill stick with red... u can have the jungle. Thanks anyways

[Quackaddict9]

Looks like some weather is coming in and temps look like they are going to drop 20 degrees or so. Think this will screw with the fish? Lock jaw?

I've been told of someone who just texted me saying they are hitting the walleyes on the lake right now with the storm apporaching or already there.

[wall2wall eyes]

Was on Red Jan.19-22 fishing in 15 fow 2 guys caught a total of 14 walley and 1 northern. No night bite at all. Jigged and dead sticked. Most of the walleye's were 10 to 16 inches. This was our third trip up this year and it's been slow for Red. Maybe what we need is some cold weather.

[Outdoor Authority]

The last two days has been really good fishing as the storm approaches it seems like the walleyes are getting more and more aggressive. Jigging and rattle reels are neck and neck. Speaking of witch chalk another up for the rattle reel. Nice 18 incher. However it seems like super small shinners are working great in the day and crappie minnows better at night. Smaller fat heads have been good but the bigger ones havent been to hot. As far as color goes its been yellow green in the day along with pink or orange and at night pink or red.

[aczr2k]

We fished friday and it was pooooor. One little one for 4 people, plenty of lookers and no takers. Threw the whole tackle box down the hole, made no difference. I'm going to blame it on the weather, only fished from 11 to 6, wanted to leave before the rain started.

[laportian]

Fished on Sat for 2 1/2 hours and between two of us we iced 14 walleyes and two jumbos. We got out there earlier but had recoil problems with our auger so didn't start fishing til 3ish. Missed lots of light biters. Jiggin spoons seemed to work. We had lots of Northland spoons and tried the Lindy one too. All worked well. The ones we had with a single red hook seemed to fair a little better than the trebles. Last two weeks seems we could only catch with trebles. Go figure.

[broken line]

Four of us fished off of Hillman's Road, about 6-6.5 miles out on Wed - Thurs morning. Very slow. We caught 5 or 6 eyes (one keeper). We tried finding them, moved and cut quite a few holes with no better luck. Off to LOW after that...

[limited out]

Our group of 4 fished out of JR's Friday afternoon to Sunday morning. Totals were 31 eyes and 1 pike and probably missed the same. Being mobile helped tremendously. We got out of rental and drilled all day Saturday hopping holes picking up most of our fish. Amazingly, all fish on dead sticks though jigging seemed to improved chances. Red Hook or Blue Glow were the best with large fatheads. Bite was mush slower at night.

Hats off to JR's. Very impressed with his service and work to put us on fish. The $5 fish fry with our caught fish cannot be beat. We will defininately return next year.

[Scottie Thomas]

I'll throw in a quick report, as I value all the other posts on here.

Was on Red the majority of the day Saturday. We drove from Bemidji and took two portables out for 3 guys. We went out of the new Carsellas access on the south end of the lake. We fished 14.5 feet of water. The roads out from the access were great and once we got off the road, travel with pickups was very easy. (Maybe not now with the blowing snow)We fished throughout 10:30 a.m.- 7:00 pm.

Caught 24 fish and kept 8, releasing many that were borderline 12-14 inch keepers and some bigger fish too. Almost all fish during the day came on deadsticks. We found that not even touching the line or jigging yielded the most fish. It seemed the fish would stare at the jig for minutes on end and then just slam it. From about 4-6 pm, most of the fish came jigging a glow spoon.

We set tip ups, some dead bait and one sucker, but we got no flags through the day.

Talking to other houses on that part of the lake, they experienced much the same that we did.

Good trip all around, get up there!

[chris-n-fish]

our group of 3 wheel houses and seven guys went out of Mort's on thursday 1/21 through 1/24 caught 50-60 walleyes between all of us. caught fish during the day thursday until sunset then no fish during the night. we moved friday out around center bar and didn't have much luck so we moved to a new spot friday night and set up around 8:15 again no fish during the night. saturday we caught fish steady through out the day and then that night we were up almost every hour with a rattle reel, what a difference, same spot two nights in a row one night nothing next night fish all night long. caught 90% on dead sticks or rattle reels, jigging i think helped bring them in but they would not hit the bait unless it was just sitting there for a long time.

I have never been up there when the weather was so warm, a guy could actually go outside and do something with having to get all bundled up.

I am looking forward to the next trip up there.

[Big_Cahuna]

Went to URL the 19th-21st Jan with my 11 year old. Caught a limit of keepers and a lone perch. A few jumped off the lines at the hole and one was able to break away. All in all we had fun. Thanks to Kelly, Patsy and Fred for making it a great father/son outing. While it is fun to catch a ton of fish I think it is just as important to teach the next generation that fishing like anything in life can be feast or less than and still be a great experience. BTW I bought the AJ Petrowske book and it really is a great story told in a very interesting style. I have my entire house getting dibs in on who reads it next. I recommend it to all.

Big Cahuna

[eyehead]

Big Cahuna, where can a guy buy that book from???

[cookie129]

north country gas station here in waskish had a few last I checked. I very great book I borrowed to a friend and have never dseen it again. He said it would be a great movie and I would have to agree

[kelly-p]

The books title is "On the Trail".

[mhmklein]

How much snow did you guys get up there?

[DrStizo]

heading up for our third trip of the year sat-2nd with portavilla, will let everyone know how we do-thinking of hitting Plantaganet fri evening or maybe chasing some crappies on Larson or Irving

[bugeye]

Heading up for the weekend whats been the hot ticket this year? Will be using tip ups as well if we can find any shinners.

[ironrangegemneye]

We fished out of Mort's on Wednesday. Started fishing at 10:00 AM and stayed until 6:30 PM. We worked pretty hard to get the 3 keepers which were 13, 16, 16.5 inches. We also caught a nice 20 incher. Those fish were all caught about an hour apart. Between 4 and 4:30, we missed about 8 fish. They would take the bobber down and just suck on the minnow, because when we got them halfway up, they would let go.

Oh ya, we got checked my the very nice officer on the ice. He did not laugh at any jokes and tried getting us to admit to wrong doings when we were fishing honestly and just out for a day off from work. That person told us we were fishing in holes with extra rods, but when we said that was untrue and he could look to see that those holes were frozen over and had not been used all day, he began questioning us even more. That was along with trying to tell us that it took us too long to answer the door, which was about 15 or 20 seconds( I folded up my chair that was sitting in front of the door and then my fishing partner answered the door) and asking us what we were doing that took us that long. He also tried getting us to say that we were using tip ups on top of our two rods each in the house, when it was blowing 25 mph and about -20 at least with the wind chill. This was all done while he stood with the door to the rental house open for about 5 minutes. Oh ya, he did the same exact thing with my brother one week before that. The only thing different was that he parked a couple hundred yards away from them, in a place they could not see him coming, and then walked up very quietly. My brother called him on that and asked him why he was trying to do the same thing with us. It caught the guy off guard and then he left.

I totally understand that he was doing his job and has to be like that to an extent since there are people who do those illegal things, but he was out right rude to us.

This will probably get deleted, but if you read this and arent't doing anything wrong when you are fishing on Red, try not to get intimidated by the guy if he pulls the same stuff.

[Quackaddict9]

Lol, that's funny. I dislike CO's who are like that but they got to make sure everything is right but they can't just assume things if they did not see any wrong doings inside a ice house from the outside! Unreal. A few years ago I had a bucket of crappies for two of us and he kept asking me how many there was, it was getting frustrating...As of looking back, I should have dumped all the crappies out and have him count them after asking me the 4th time. Just doing their job, I guess!

Anyway Thanks for the report, I will be out close to the Rez line Sat/Sun and will leave a report.

[slimy]

Intiidation is not their job, checking if you are law abiding is what their purpose is and the good CO's are a great source of info. These guys that have the gocha mentality are a real pain. We had one of our local deer camps this fall visited after dark by our local CO one the hunters seen a black silhouette around one of the buildings, thinking it was one of his buddies he yells out "hey Joe" the CO replies "state conservation officer checking the premise" here he had already gone through several buildings and had found nothing unusual then he barraged the hunters with 20 questions trying to make them incriminate themselves. What happened to the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures. Even in our lake advisory meeting up here there is a over abundance of COs , at times up to 6, it feels as if the fisheries folks feel threatened by us tough lake assoc. people so they bring the muscle.

[JesseParker1]

I think that they are great and doing a huge service for us! But, I agree with some of them come in and try to get you to say something even if you are a 100% in the right. Again, I do appreciate what they are doing and the people that are in the wrong should be caught! But, folks like a majority on this site are people that law-abiding citizens and we follow the rules. I feel nervious everytime I get checked. I am not doing anything wrong, but you are always thinking is there something that could be wrong?

They are very important to the sucess of all fisheries and most do a great job protecting everyone. But, I know what you mean at times it is like they are trying to make you say you are doing something that you are not.

[bender]

As I said a year ago. I love red Lake, I love the people who live there, but the game wardens ran me off the lake 2 years ago. I did not need to be checked getting on the lake, while on the lake, and when getting off the lake.

I had never done anything wrong, but I got tired of being treated like I had! Those who checked me were always rude and in a foul mood. I would think they would understand, our license fees, etc. allow them a living in the area.

I live 8 hours from the lake, spent several dollars in the area with our group. Just got tired of being hastled. Sorry

[shaky legs2]

I have never had a bad experience with a CO on URL. I will not say the same for the St. Croix River where they checked everything including the fire extinguisher in the boat looking for something. Maybe I am in a minority. I have had three visits on URL The first two were back in the crappie days in the middle of a blizzard and I give them credit for even being out there in those conditions. It was so bad we didn't even know if we could make it to shore. He asked to see our license but didn't count our crappies. All he was interested in was getting to the bottom of our crappie bucket to see if there were any walleyes in there (before they were legal to keep). Good for him as part of the problem with the previous walleye bust was overlimits by "sport" fisherman. The last time we had a visit was to our wheel house and the CO took some time to visit and share information as he was checking houses on his snowmobile. He was very professional and polite and did not check licenses but could see we were legal with the amount of lines down. It might have helped that an outfitter was in our house at the time.

[catchphoto_filet]

Incrimination is the number one thing im sure that gets most people! If a CO wants to play that game with me hes losing his time. who cares if your house has 12 holes open and your only fishing your 2! All i can say is they better be able to prove what they think without unreasonable search and seizure! Theres a reason they cant come in your fish house and for that matter you dont even have to open it! If it takes me 30 secs or 10mins to open it thats what it takes. They are doing their jobs most of them without problems but its the ones lookin to make a name for themselves I have a problem with.

[traveler]

So far I've been checked 3 or 4 times on Red, between soft and hard water. No problems....CO's were either friendly or at least not confrontational.

I know guys get hassled...but the couple ([PoorWordUsage]) friends I know who love to go on and on about how the wardens are just "after" them most likely deserved what they got. I'm not saying anyone posting to this thread fits that bill, I'm just saying there are usually 2 sides to a story...

[SHANTY]

Rudest officers i have meet

[side_laker]

thinking about heading up to red this morning. was wondering if anyone had a report from yesterday or last night. where would you say to go out of.

[Ernie Lessard]

just got back from red yesterday. was verry slow got my limit but had 2 work 4 them was out of rogers. pink worked 4 me got 2 jigging. dont think it matters where u go out up there after a mile out the depth is close 2 the same all over around 14ft