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Metro Area Minnesota Fishing Reports & Ice Conditions


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Just recently got a alumacraft fisherman so I have been fishing every day on Crystal in the morning. I caught a couple muskie today (I think) because they certainly don't look like northern, about 30 inches or so (no ruler on boat yet) with plastic worms. Of course I released them, not much of a keeper, fish and release 99.9% of time.

Anyone know the cross streets to the public boat launch to Orchard or how to get there. Address will be ideal for GPS.

Thanks,

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Turn at the Holiday Station behind the Lakeville Gander. Follow it to the lake and around two turns to the park and launch on the right.

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its usually not that bad on weekday mornings and afternoons. After work and weekends are when it gets bad

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Just got off the water on Orchard and it was slow. One small bass and too many dinky sunnies... But a nice morning to be out though...

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Taking neighbor and his kids out to Crystal tomorrow morning to chase the sunnies.

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Taking neighbor and his kids out to Crystal tomorrow morning to chase the sunnies.

you shouldnt have to chase too hard to find sunnies out there, if you dont mind dinks. Ive only ever caught one keepable sunny out of there

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Yeah, that's all I've seen as well. But it's close to our houses in case (when) the kids get restless.

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Grabbed the last open spot in the lot at 6:45. Fished until 11:00 C&R well over 100 sunnies and one perch. Could have kept maybe 15 or so that were bigger enough to eat.

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There are some decent fish in there. Last winter I pulled one out that went 10"

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Man, working grave yard shift now is making it impossible for me to get out. Keep bringing in the stories to keep me salivating. I got one day off this weekend only which is a Saturday and I may just as well drag myself out no matter how tired I am.

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"kinda have to include Orchard into this thread as well..just got off the water and had some success with bucktails. managed one Tiger (28", small one) and four Northern (22" to 25"...little hammer handles). it was fun though! very weedy, as always! the smell wasn't as bad as last year...maybe the chemical they are treating it with is working?!?!

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Im thinking about heading out to spring this weekend .. anyone had any luck out there?

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Went out last Friday night the sunnies were still biting. On the way in my 5 year old told me she wanted to catch a big fish so for fun I thru a Taildancer out and told her to hold onto the rod with both hands. It took 5 passes on one of my favorite weedlines, but she managed to catch her first northern. 24 incher. Not bad for a 5 year old. Took her about 15 minutes to get it to the boat. To my surprise she said let's catch another one! Gotta love it!

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Been fishing one of the local lakes pretty hard over the last few days...Bass have been very active around docks and weedlines.

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  • 2 weeks later...

drove by Marion today, and WOW the water is up. i saw a truck in the parking lot with a DNR sticker on the door. they launched a boat. i didn't see them anywhere on the lake...any idea what might be going on? i can't imagine it's all from rain. maybe something is plugged up somewhere?!?

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I know at the moment there is no swimming in Marion because of some bacteria.

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hmm...doesn't sound too good. i did see lots of pleasure boaters out there, and a few PWC's as well. i hope they get it figured out by winter...he he.

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kinda old news now, but for those of you who come out to enjoy Marion from communities other than Lakeville, the DNR shut down the swimming beach for a few days due to finding e-coli in the water. the newspaper article said it had to do with goose droppings and how high the water has been. i've been by there almost everyday since and the water is still really high. the swimming beach is now open. interesting stuff!

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Went out on the west end of Tonka Sunday morning with my 6 year old. Found a school of sunfish on the outside edge of a weedline. We probably caught 200 to keep 20 filetable fish. I could have targeted bigger gills deeper but 6 year old isn't really good at slip bobber fishing yet. After it started to get really hot around 11:00 am and she started complaining we hit a few of my favorite deep weedlines for trolling cranks. The first three did't result in anything but on the last one she reeled in a 3 lb largemouth that we released. Just farther down the weedline she hooked into a 24 inch northern. This was only her 2nd northern and I let her take it solo. On her very first northern ever a couple of weeks ago I helped her keep a little bit. This time I figured, she has caught one, let her do this one completely by herself. The look on her face was priceless.

Sunday night went out on the east end just to do some trolling. The surface weeds were a nightmare. Managed to catch and release 4 northerns all between 20-23 inches. Seems like there is a ton of fish in that particular class.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Went to Orchard this afternoon. Pretty slow but my nine year old son caught a 32" Muskie as we were trolling back toward the launch. We were in about 5-6 fow using a small rapala crank bait.

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Love to see when the kids get an experience like that. Congrats to him on the muskie! Took my oldest daughter out on Tonka last night from 6-8 pm. Tried to troll a few of my favorite spots for northerns. She ended up catching three largemouths and I got skunked! The whole way home in the truck she was calling all kinds of people to let them know she outfished her dad. It was really cool! Trolling was tough, as is normally the case on a Sunday evening on Tonka because of all the chopped up surface weeds and big weed masses floating around on the surface but we managed a few fish. Weather was absoluely perfect and it was just a great evening to be on the water. Didn't target any sunnies, because I just didn't feel like cleaning fish last night. Boat is going into the shop for some maintenance work and I won't be fishing next weekend. Most likely can give another update in a couple of weeks.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Got the boat back from the repair shop. WOW! It has never run so good! Won't say where I went because I don't want to break any rules? Went out on Tonka on Saturday to try out the motor since I haven't had a chance to put it in the water since I picked it up last Monday. Tried one of our go to spots and the sunfish were there, but not very interested. Switched over to pulling cranks for northerns and we had a good time. We caught more fish than I could count in 3 hours. Biggest northern was 31 3/4. Been a goal all summer to land one over 30. Finally broke the slump. Usually got one that big within a few weeks of opener. Been a different year with the high water and all the rain. Looking forward to this coming weekend.

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pikeguy, you can mention the name of the repair shop, you just cannot provide a direct link to the shop unless they are a sponsor.

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So if I were to say that I take mine to All Season Motor Sports in New Germany and that the owner is Greg who is a friend of my uncle and some other people I know, that would be okay? What is really cool is my father in law was in the boat on Saturday with us, and his dad owned the boat before me for years. He said that it never ran this good the whole time his dad owned it. Since he had it since it was new in 1981, that is pretty cool! I am now brave enough to venture farther from home. It has always run, just been a little quirky! I used to think that the choke was sticking and it just ran at half power until it warmed up. Who knew that an ignition switch control module could cause such problems? Once it warmed up it was always fine for the rest of the day. Only acted up when it was cold? As long as I had it in, he tuned it up, did new seals and impeller in the lower unit. Compression checked out good linkage adjusted, plus timing at idle and at full power. I cannot believe it is the same motor. It doesn't even smoke anymore. I thought that was normal on two stoke motors? I'm going to have to smoke cigars while fishing until I adjust. smile Have a good one EBASS. Maybe we will see you on tonka this fall?

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I take mine to Don's Used Outboards in Maple Grove next to Eagle Lake.

+1 on Don. He has done work on my motor a couple times and he is an honest guy and does great work.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Fished a small north east metro lake last night and had decent results. I just pulled my waders out of retirement(I've been in school for the last 6 years and haven't fished much in that time) and found that the lake was really high. I was able to wade in, but I was up to my belly button before I had enough clearance to cast(a lot of brush on what used to be the shoreline). Caught 4 bass, three were in the .75-1.5# range, and a nice one that was probably close to 3#. Just casting a spinnerbait.

Also caught a northern that was a real jerk-wad. As I said, I had about 5 inches of room between the water and the top of my waders, which made taking fish off the hook a little difficult. There was nowhere to set my rod so I just had to pinch it in the crook of my arm. This was okay for bass because they are easy to just lip, and I was only using a spinnerbait so I didn't have to worry about trebles. I get the northern on, and it put up a really fun fight, but then it's as if it sensed my de-hooking worries. I was trying to keep my rod pointed away from my body since my face was a lot closer to the action than normal and I didn't want a shiny new piercing in me cheek. This northern gets about 20 feet away from me and then starts swimming directly at me. And I don't mean that he stopped fighting and just was being reeled towards me, no, swimming to the point where I had a bunch of slack in my line. That little turd, anyways, I finally got him to my side grabbed my spinner and he shook it off right there next to me. Easy enough! He was about 3 lbs I would guess, nothing spectacular but he really did put up a fantastic fight.

There was a canoe out there with two guys and they seemed to be doing pretty well too, they probably caught 10 or so fish while I was there. I think they were bass, but they were definitely smaller than the ones I was catching.

I might go back and see if I can wade down the shoreline a bit to find some deeper water. The lake gets to be about 25 feet deep in the center and I think I could get to place that allows me to cast along that dropoff while still standing in shallow water. Maybe the bigger pike are hanging out down there. I've seen a few northern over 30" swimming in this lake before, never caught one though.

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  • The title was changed to Metro Area Minnesota Fishing Reports & Ice Conditions

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