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South Central MN Weekly Fishing Report, 7-16-09

The walleye bite remains strong in the area despite inconsistent weather patterns and warming water. As for presentation, pick your poison! Spinners and night crawlers trolled behind bottom bouncers probably took the top spot but trolling crank baits has been good as has casting lipless crank baits, slip bobber fishing with leeches and draggin' jigs and night crawlers. I don't want to sound like a broken record but if you're fishing in this area right now, review the South Central forum July 2009 "Tip of the Month". Beyond that, it's a matter of putting the right presentation in the right location. The most active fish have moved to "no man's land", cruising mid-lake transition areas and/or structure like an underwater point or rock pile. However, there are still fish hanging near skinny water in <4' of water as well as in 4 - 8' of water and those fish continue to use wind-blown rip-rap or cattails and bottle necks and pinch points in their respected water depths. The deeper bite has slowed to less than a crawl but if you're dead set on working deeper water, look way up the water column for suspended fish. They're likely feeding on pan fish using the same area.

When targeting crappies and 'gills, search both large and small flats near gravel and sand to mud transitions or on outside weedlines. Some of the better presentations this past week continue to be tube jigs and hair jigs but don't be afraid to go after the better quality fish just as if you were fishing walleyes. The suspended bite is taking shape where some of the better quality pan fish in the area lakes are being found right under the water's surface over main lake and secondary basins. When fishing basins, look at outside and inside turns and/or the side of the basin that is receiving most of the wind action.

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Have you been on Big Jefferson lately? I went out earlier this week and it almost seemed as if the bite stopped for sunnies and crappies. Any comments or advice on this?

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Fished a tourney out there last tuesday and one of the docks we fished had an elderly couple just unloading their gear from thier boat and one guy showed us the 30ish inch eye he caught trolling on big Jeff., said there were other big ones he caught too

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Have you been on Big Jefferson lately? I went out earlier this week and it almost seemed as if the bite stopped for sunnies and crappies. Any comments or advice on this?

I haven't been on Big Jefferson this open water season but have seen what you're describing on other local lakes. 95% of the time, a good bite turned sour has been related to increased availability of food and/or change in water temperature. If it's pan fish you're after, be sure to check out that suspended bite.

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My sons slammed the bluegills tonight on Big Jeff. They were throwing small spinners and/or 1/32 oz. jigs tipped with a Berkley Trout worm. 4-8ft. of water. Some hit 9". Small stripers (white bass) are everywhere!!

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Waded the Cannon River today between Faribo and Dundas, Smallies were snappin' at everything i threw at em' with top water plugs doing the most damage, tried twister tails and fat raps for some walleyes in the deep holes but couldn't connect

I roughly caught 25 in about three hours, majority of the fish were a pound or less but did manage a couple in 15" range, waded this stretch for about a mile upstream, did alot of walking between "fishy" spots but the work was well worth it, the water was pretty low i thought

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South Central MN Weekly Fishing Report, 7-26-09

Water clarities are now reduced to inches on most lakes in the area and this gets a lot of people down. But let me tell you that the fish are still feeding and very vulnerable during these turbid algae conditions. As it relates to walleye fishing, don't let the lack of reporting get you down. Sure, the bite has slowed some but it was bound to at some point. It's been a phenomenal open water season for this part of the state and yes, fish are still biting out there. It's just that they're not coming as easy. "Spot specific" has been the words of the week with casting to ultra-shallow water definitely moving to the front of the presentation line-up. Lipless crank baits that make a lot of noise should be your first choice, followed by 4 - 6" plastic swim baits or twister tails. Standard crank baits like #5 shallow Shad Raps or #8 X-Raps are also good options. Pick a spot and fish it hard! Anchoring and working an area for 1 - 3 hours is the name of the game. If you don't have patience, it could be a challenge for you. Picking a spot to work is not necessarily that difficult right now either. "Fish the wind" because all types of structure (i.e. transitions, weed stubble, rock) are holding fish in <6' of water. It's timing.

When targeting crappies and 'gills, slowly pull yourself from what has been working for well over a month and try something different. Go right after these fish with aggressive tactics in less than typical locations. Right now, there are loads of crappies and 'gills hanging just under the water's surface on lakes with deep (20+') water. Go over the main and secondary basins quickly with #4 Salmo Hornets or your favorite small profile crank bait or beetle spin until you make contact. If you like what's happening, stick with it or slow down and fish 'em with jiggin' Rapalas. Ice fishing in July and August! It's a blast. Another off-the-wall presentation for mid-summer panfish is to focus on the skinny water and "fish the shade" with larger gear, similar to that as what's described above for walleye fishing. Docks, boat lifts and timber provide the kind of shade that is desired. Often times, this can be a great option when the sun is setting and/or rising.

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Trolled with #4 salmos today. Trouble_28 nailed a sweet 14" er(crappie), and the rest were all over 10". I put on a #5 shad rap, started to pick em also.

Mouneau put a bass in my new boat, along with a few nice crappies.

After dark it was nothing but bull heads.

18FOW ~2mph was the ticket.

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This past Saturday was my third time out fishing this summer and i usually fish for panfish but i went to a different lake after walleyes and for my first time fishing them there i did pretty good i got 5 walleyes and 2 little northerns my biggest was 22 inches a little over 3 pounds and the other 4 were between 10 and 15 inches nothin to special but it was fun.

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Made it out for a while today... mainly fished right during the middle of the day so the fishing was not the best, but we (2 of us) managed about 10 crappies, two small walleyes about 10in, and another larger walleye guessing about 24 that got off at the side of the boat, also a couple small bass sunnies and one monster bully...all fish where caughtin 6-10 ft of water trolling a #4 of everyones favorite crank, lures with blue in them seemed to work better than others...sidenote, Mongo, Im pretty sure it was you that i saw today (i was landing the bully and wasent exactly happy when i found out what it was)...all in all a pretty good day of fishing, sure beats work!!

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Hey - yeah, that was me. That was a beast of a bullhead you caught. My son is a budding river-rat and was mentally calculating how much cut bait that could make for cats....

We ended up doing alright too - we ended up with three walleye and some crappie in just a couple hours. We ended up working a tiny point with a transition pretty hard for most of our fish.

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crappies have been going crazy over twister tails and jigs. troll slowly or pitch jigs under docks and boat lifts. they are actively feeding all day long so get after them.

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wow, great morning on the lake. tried a new lake today and had some great luck. took advice from TO, riverrat, muddog... and others and made it work. ran #4 hornets from 6am till 2pm. we brought home a limit of Crappies all over 11''. it was awesome! 2 small bass, 3 northerns and 3 eyes. none of the others had much size. oh and 1 sheephead. found it true that they hit the most on turns. 7-10 ft water. as soon as the cloud cover left the action slowed. the real colors were hot early then the metallic colors were on fire. the magic speed was 2.5. thanks again guys. (sheels had hornets for $5.99 best deal i have found)

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South Central MN Weekly Fishing Report, 8-10-09

Walleye fishing remains fairly steady for most but there was definitely a shift towards fishing during low light or targeting suspended fish this past week. "Spot specific" continues to be the words of the week but trolling has again overtaken casting. Fishing ultra-shallow water is definitely where you want to be but now it's a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Salmo Hornets, X-Raps, Shad Raps, floating Rapalas and lipless crank baits all found themselves connected to a fishes mouth this week but the 4 - 6" plastic swim baits and twister tails won't go away either. The nice thing about plastics is that they can be trolled too but just a little slower than you would a crank bait. As far as picking a spot to fish, that remains fairly easy. "Fish the wind" because all types of structure (i.e. transitions, weed stubble, rock) are holding fish in <6' of water. Another area to focus on is weed stubble. There's a lot of that around! Now, if you want to go after suspended fish, that bite is definitely on. Pick a lake with 20+' of water on it and look for long expanses of it. If there's basins, mid-lake structure or points nearby, all the better! Take your homework out to the lake, tie on larger, wide-wobble crank baits like a Wally Diver, let it back ~120 - 150' and troll 2.2 - 2.6 mph. Keep an eye on your electronics and hang on. These fish are very aggressive right now.

If it's 'gills you're after, they have reacquanited themselves with shallow water in large schools and are actively feeding on darn near anything you put in front of them. Crappies are really on the move. Sometimes they're mixed right in with the 'gills while other times they can be found hugging the bottom in 15+' of water, going up and down the water column over main lake and secondary basins and even suspending with the walleyes. Be versatile when going after pan fish right now. If what you "always do" isn't working, slowly pull yourself away from "that" and try something different. Right now, there are loads of crappies and 'gills hanging just under the water's surface on lakes with deep (20+') water. Go over the main and secondary basins quickly with #4 Salmo Hornets or your favorite small profile crank bait or beetle spin until you make contact. If you like what's happening, stick with it or slow down and fish 'em with jiggin' Rapalas. Ice fishing in July and August! It's a blast. Another off-the-wall presentation for mid-summer panfish is to focus on the skinny water and "fish the shade" with larger gear, similar to that as what's described above for walleye fishing. Docks, boat lifts and timber provide the kind of shade that is desired. Often times, this can be a great option when the sun is setting and/or rising.

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Thanks for the nice detailed report TO. I will be hitting the water tonight and be focusing on the tactics you covered.

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nice report TO but as for fishing the deeper water 20+ feet or more deep i think 120-150' back is a bit much with a wally diver. i know the more line you let out the deeper they dive but if you have mono line that has a little stretch to it how you ever going to hook anything that far back? chances of bringing one to the boat are maybe 3 out of 5 if that. or are we talking about using fireline or power pro line in this case?

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T.O.

This may be a stupid question to most of you but what are some examples of "swim baits". I am trying to learn as much as I can and am not familiar with all the different lure types yet. What are the popular choices for swim baits. Appreciate any and all responses. Thank You Good luck fishin!!!

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T.O.

This may be a stupid question to most of you but what are some examples of "swim baits". I am trying to learn as much as I can and am not familiar with all the different lure types yet. What are the popular choices for swim baits. Appreciate any and all responses. Thank You Good luck fishin!!!

Not a stupid question. Thanks for asking.

Plastic swim baits come in an almost uncontrollable variety of lengths and colors but in most cases, the common dominator is a paddle tail. B-Fish-N Tackle, Berkley, Culprit and Storm are just a few of many swimbait manufacturer's/supplier's.

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Thank you. That is what I figured but wasn't sure. I love reading this forum and have learned so much from all of you Fm'ers. I read this site several times a day and try and soak in all the tips and tricks you people share and have gained a ton of confidence out on the water. I rarely get time to go so when I do I like to catch something. However even if I don't catch anything it is still better to be on the water than any where else. But since I have started reading this site I have rarely gone to any lake and got "skunked" even if its sunnies and crappies. I LOVE fishin and introducing other people to the sport. Thanks again and good luck fishin

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nice report TO but as for fishing the deeper water 20+ feet or more deep i think 120-150' back is a bit much with a wally diver. i know the more line you let out the deeper they dive but if you have mono line that has a little stretch to it how you ever going to hook anything that far back? chances of bringing one to the boat are maybe 3 out of 5 if that. or are we talking about using fireline or power pro line in this case?

Most people have switched to using braided line for trolling cranks, gives a better sense of whats going on with the bait and lets you pull free from weeds more easily.

Depth is the crucial thing when trolling and how ever much line you need to let out to achieve it is what you need to do. Last summer on Leech lake we were trolling cranks anywhere from 140'-210' back.

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TO is there a way to break down a lake on here. learnin alot. breakdown like primary basin to secondary basins. or anyone for that matter. when deep and looking for points... do we mean contour lines or are we saying like a point on land where a park is? thanks in advance. Ryan

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I've been on a pretty decent bite as of late, probably the best of the year for decent sized fish. On Saturday, I fished for 10 hours and had the opportunity to really try out some different lures, depths, and presentations. Contrary to what I used to believe about lure selection, it is right now the most important element out of the three mentioned above.

The lakes around here are simply "alive" with baitfish balls everywhere. They are suspended over deeper water but no matter how deep of water you are in(8ft-30ft.)the baitfish seem to prefer a certain key depth at which to suspend. I'm assuming this is water temp. related. If you are not marking baitfish on your electronics then you need to find them asap. I've had luck finding them on all different sorts of structure, so it's not that hard.

Back to the lure selection. I experimented with over 20+ different lures of all shapes, sizes, shallow runners/deep divers, colors, lure manufactures etc...but the one key I found is they wanted something that looked exactly, not similiar, but exactly like the baitfish they are keying on. I caught a few fish on alot of different lures but when I went back to "matching the hatch", my success rate was sometimes 3-1 to 5-1 over the other lures I was using. Walleye, northern, bass, pannies, etc...they are ALL keying in on this. Shallow, deep, or in-between...doesn't seem to matter.

I spent alot of time on the water around here last week and found some success with the items I mentioned above. Just thought I'd share some of what's been working for me. CPR!!

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I've been on a pretty decent bite as of late, probably the best of the year for decent sized fish. On Saturday, I fished for 10 hours and had the opportunity to really try out some different lures, depths, and presentations. Contrary to what I used to believe about lure selection, it is right now the most important element out of the three mentioned above.

The lakes around here are simply "alive" with baitfish balls everywhere. They are suspended over deeper water but no matter how deep of water you are in(8ft-30ft.)the baitfish seem to prefer a certain key depth at which to suspend. I'm assuming this is water temp. related. If you are not marking baitfish on your electronics then you need to find them asap. I've had luck finding them on all different sorts of structure, so it's not that hard.

Back to the lure selection. I experimented with over 20+ different lures of all shapes, sizes, shallow runners/deep divers, colors, lure manufactures etc...but the one key I found is they wanted something that looked exactly, not similiar, but exactly like the baitfish they are keying on. I caught a few fish on alot of different lures but when I went back to "matching the hatch", my success rate was sometimes 3-1 to 5-1 over the other lures I was using. Walleye, northern, bass, pannies, etc...they are ALL keying in on this. Shallow, deep, or in-between...doesn't seem to matter.

I spent alot of time on the water around here last week and found some success with the items I mentioned above. Just thought I'd share some of what's been working for me. CPR!!

Nothin' like hitting the nail on the head Chris! We are definitely on the same page. I love it.

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TO is there a way to break down a lake on here. learnin alot. breakdown like primary basin to secondary basins. or anyone for that matter. when deep and looking for points... do we mean contour lines or are we saying like a point on land where a park is? thanks in advance. Ryan

Post a downloaded photo of a lake you're wondering about in a separate thread and we'll pick it apart.

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