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

[JBMasterAngler]

Seems like 90% of the big pike are caught with crappie minnows (or fatheads) on 4 pound test line. My question is...how are these fish landed? How do these massive fish not spool you every time?

[Quackaddict9]

Quote:

My question is...how are these fish landed? How do these massive fish not spool you every time?

playing it smart, have some patient, tire the fish, head up first up through the hole (of course ) are big roles that come to mind

[Scupper]

What Quackaddict9 said and a little luck.

I posted this picture the other day on here somewhere but will share again.

My brother landed this 40 and a half inch on 3lb test P-line.

He was very patient and of course lucky.

Good Luck...

[Aces In The Hole]

Just got back from a fun trip on Upper Red. Stayed in one of Hillman's houses. This was my first trip up there this year and it was some what slow fishing. We were 9 miles out about 75 yards from the reservation line. pretty cool being way out there. From what I heard all weekend, the fishing was slow in all houses. Our house did the best. 5 people 25 fish. 19 walleyes from 9" to 18". Had a little fish fry and we each took home 2 fish. 1 perch that was 11". 3 pike 16" to 31". Each caught on a sucker and rattle reel. 2 crappies 14" to 14.5". Glow pink was the hot color for the weekend. We lost about 15 fish at the hole, one of which was a crappie. ( My lost fish.) Very light nite. Had to use a spring bobber to catch most of the fish. It was a good trip. BJ from Hollman's treated us great!

3 weeks til I'll be back there staying in one of Kelly and Jonny's houses. Hopefully the fishing will pick up!

[whitetail_freak]

hello everyone!! just got back from upper red, fishing was absolutely horrible the first day. 1 walleye that would have looked excellent in my aquarium. not kidding. 12 inches? maybe! that was it.

second day, started off with a bang right at sun up! 43 inch monster nothern hit a fathead on a rattle reel and boy did that reel rattle! oh man!! took 5 or 6 different attemps to get its head through the hole, but finally got it, got some great pics, and released her. going to get a replica of her, then the crappies started to bite, EXTREMLY LIGHT lightest crappie bite ive ever had, some of them barely moved the spring bobber. caught 14 crappies all together smallest was 12.5 inches. biggest was 14.5. still no walleyes though.

third day, 1 16 inch walleye right at sun up, nothing for about 3 hours. then caught 5 crappies right in a row. then the walleyes picked up and bit like there was no tomorrow! after such horrible luck the first 2 days the walleyes made up for it on the 3rd day, 37 walleyes, and 13 were over the slot. lot of fun.

[madfisher]

Fished out of Westwind this past weekend, 4 miles out. 13 walleyes and at least that many lost. No crappies, couple perch. All fish on a deadstick. No particular time and lure didn't matter as long as it wasn't being jigged. Very light bite as I read earlier. Good luck fellas

[fishing-g]

if you dont mind saying, where were you out of and how far out? Seems like the best crappie report of the year. were you in a hard house or did you move around and chase them?

[marksullivan]

Hello jonny from the sullivan boys. For anyone going up I would highly recomend these folks. I am 51 yrs old and have never rented a sleeper house before. Also first time to URL. I don't have the time to print everything they did for us. Top shelf operation. Fishing in our house for a first timer I thought was great. Caught approx. 37 to 40 walley. ate 8. took home our limit of 16 1\2 inchers for the four of us. threw back approx. 8 to 10 overs and released a few small ones. One small northern. No crappie or perch just walley. we were there the 21-23. Talked with the warden on wed (nice young man) and he had seen 5 pike over 40 that day alone. 12 ft of water and white or pink glow hooks deadsticking was the best. No activity on rattles after 9 pm so we also slept well. Thanks againg Jonny will see you again for sure. Sully boys

[Random guy]

Warden said he checked on Sullivan, Sullivan and Sullivan in our house...he smiled and asked "Spose those guys are related."

[limited out]

Group of 4 of us were up the 23rd throught the 25th out of Northbound Fishing on the SE end. Fishing was relatively slow considering the crazy expectations but we still caught 20 from 1 PM on friday to 8 AM on Sunday. The fished ranged from 12 to 19 inches with most of them 16 to 17. Great fish fry on Sat night and still brought home another 7.

90% of the fish were caught on blood red or glow yellow set lines a few inches off the bottom. Jigging did absolutely nada - they would come in and sniff and then zoom away. We did miss a very large gator saturday afternoon as well.

Overall, great trip and I would recommend Northbound to others. Lonnie had us separeted from the groups and checked in on us daily. I would definately go back.

[lakelovr]

Fished URL Wednesday-Friday of last week. We were about 1 mile down the angle road out of Hillman's. We caught 25 walleyes on Wednesday during the day and it slowed down quite a bit with the cold front moving in. Thursday we caught only 11 and finished off the weeend with 4 more Friday morning. Also caught 2 little snake northerns and 3 keeper perch over the 2 1/2 days. All 3 guys I brought up were URL first timers, so it was fun watching the size of their eyes after pulling up fish after fish.

Thanks to Jonny for hooking us up with Kelly (not Kelly P. although he's a nice guy too)! Broke a leaf spring on one side of the shack. Kelly had a piece welded for us that held up all the way back to the cities. Asked him how much he wanted and he said $20. Gave him $50 because it would have been well over $100 anywhere else. He's a great guy and a great guy to know if you ever have a trailer problem up there. He is located in the pole barn across the street from Hillman's as you are heading onto Hillman's road on the ice. Thanks KELLY!

[kelly-p]

Kelly B has been repairing Buddy's plow trucks since the start of the "crappie boom". We break them and he fixes them, also he is very skilled at running a V-Plow. After so many years of laying under trucks outside in -20 temps we are a little conerned about him getting spoiled now that he has a heated shop this year.

[lakelovr]

A bottle of Windsor would probably go a long ways with Kelly B. We're going to just carry a bottle on our trips up to URL just in case something should go wrong...

[theghost_03]

Spent the past weekend with Portavilla and was very impressed and pleased with the quality of the service and houses. Bill stopped by several times during the day and although the fishing was not hot, we had a excellent trip. We ended up with around 20 fish and one nice 15" slab. The action did pick up Sat night from 3-8 pm. The fish that did come through were somewhat finicky, glow red seemed to work best. I did hear of a 47" pike that came into Rogers resort for a picture!! Good luck the rest of the year everyone!!

[Scupper]

1/12/09

Here is the 47 inch pike that was caught and released

in Duffy's house, it weighed somewhere between 33 and 36 pounds...

[hugonian1]

WOW

Now that is a gator!!!

[brna0102]

Do you guys think that the oxygen levels are so low in the water due to the amount of snow cutting off the sunlight and for most of the year is the reason for such a slow bite. I've been there 2 weekends in a row now & both about 30 fish total per weekend. Not all bad by any means. Granted all of the cold fronts play a huge role. Are the fish so inactive that a 30 fish weekend this year is comparable to a 100+ fish weekend this time last year?

[Quackaddict9]

that pike is scary, was it released? It looked like its dead because of the colors! true albino? haha

[BottomPounder]

Thats a good question. I would love to hear Kelly and Jonny's insight on this.

[kelly-p]

The one storm that put the snow levels on the lake up over 1 foot really slowed the bite down. Also with all this snow getting into new areas is hard to do. when we do it is very hard to get a road wide enough to handle any amount of drifting snow. 6 of the next 7 days have snow forecasted.

[harvey lee]

Fished red the last 1.5 days. Caught some eyes and a few northerns. She is slow but if one works at it, one can pick up a few of each.

Typically it seems that when I hit Red in the ice season, I kill the bite.

[The Donk]

Ha, the way the reports have been, I think I killed the bite back around Jan 10th... ever since theres only been a few GOOD reports and not too many average ones

[THEDOGG]

I was up Mon 1-26-09 and fished out of Roger's about 5 miles spent the night in a AlPINE SLEEPER and we did not evan get a bite - or mark any fish on the vex or see any on the aqua vu 360. Might have just been the weather but fished Leached the day before and did ok out of Grand Vu resort.

[bigwalts]

I see that fishing out of Rogers has not improved. Thanks for the report. I was thinking about trying it again but I think I will go to another lake instead. I was up to Red Lake at Rogers on Jan. 20-21, refer to a previous post, and did not do well at all. Three of us only caught one walleye in two days, I've never seen it so slow up there.

"SHOW ME A MAN WHO HAS NEVER BEEN SKUNKED AND I WILL SHOW YOU A MAN WHO HAS NEVER FISHED."

[eric29]

I was up Wed thru Fri, we took our house out of westwinds. It was pretty slow. There was two of us and caught our limit of keepers and we cleaned 2 for supper wed, so 8 keeper eyes and 1 perch. Let 4 big ones go and probably 8-10 little ones(12 to 14 inches). We missed alot of fish. We pretty much just use rattle wheels and alot of the time we would get one to just take enough to rattle the bell twice then it was gone, then 5 seconds later same thing on another line and then again on the next and then we usaally got it on the 4th line after we were robbed 3 times. One thing that started to work well for us was to set it right away, usually we try to let em take it a foot or better but by that time it was spit already. I did try a tip down thing but never got any bites on that line so cant say if that worked or not. Best bite for us was dusk till about 8 and right at sun up. The best jig was the glass bead with the red glow stripe. From the sounds of reports from house around us and at the bar we did better than everyone else. Must people said they caught one walleye a day.

[slayer-of-fish]

was up today all from sunup to sundown. my buddy caught 2 walleyes. i had one flag all day. a 42 1/2 inch gator 18 lbs. I had 8 lb. test leader on a tipup with a single hook and a small lt northern sucker hoping for a walleye but i was very happy bringing this one in. took me 30 min. that fish just wouldnt tire out! i knew i had to let it run with the single hook and 8lb line so i did. lots of fun. id post a pic but cant figure it out

[BK45GOLF]

anyone know if theres a hotel near JR's? A buddy said he thought he seen one on our way and would like to know..

Thanks

[slayer-of-fish]

yea there is hotel just south of kelliher. i stayed there the first time i went up to red. as your going north its on your left. you have to go up to the house next door and pay the lady there but they are pretty nice rooms. thats the only one i know about.

[bak2MN]

Shooks motel.

[westrush]

I THOUGHT THIS WAS A FISHING REPORT PAGE NOT A HOTEL PAGE