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Crookston & Thief River Fall fishing reports


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  • 'we have more fun' FishingMN Creators

Post your fishing reports for the crookston area here. evryone is welcome to post here!

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A quick little Maple Lake report here. I was out on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. I am not from the area, as I was visiting a buddy in Grand Forks, but Maple was the nearest lake. I think I fished by what would be considered the inlet, where the mass of houses is by what looks like a park. Anyways, it was on the northeast corner of the lake.

Had brought crappie minnows and waxies. Crappies wanted nothing to do with the waxies. On Tuesday I caught a total of 10 crappies in the eating range of 9-10", about three other ones that were too small. Best time was between 4:30-5. On Wednesday I came out with two other buddies, the only consistent bite happened between 5 and 5:15. Did pull a nice 11" perch at about 2, then nothing till 5 o'clock. All fish were caught on jigging spoons or plain hook deadsticks. Would see 5 or 6 fish on vexilar for every bite, they would follow the lure up but not bite.

Good Luck!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Got out on Maple 2/6/09 about 4:45 and fished until 8:00. Caught 6 nice crappies, beautiful day, just sat on a bucket outside. I missed a few and had several come up and just not bite.

Tully

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We were on Maple on Sat. 2/7/09 and fished from 12:30 - 8:00pm. Saw fish on the electronics, but only got one taker. Fish would look for long periods of time but no bites. Threw everything but the kitchen sink at them. Still a bad day fishing is still better then a good day a work...

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  • 2 months later...

Fished Maple Lake on Saturday from about 4:00pm till 10:00pm. Targeting Crappies and Panfish we used both plastics and minnows, with plastics jigged or bounced at a fairly good pace out producing the minnows and other slower approaches.

Water temperature was 48-49 on the main lake with the shallow bays reading 51-53, depending on the location, depth and bottom type.

We headed out avoiding the mass of anglers all crowded in the one and only bay they thought fish could be caught in crazy and went off to find our "own" fish... It took a while to locate some fish, but after an hour or so of probong different areas along the shore line we found a spot with a few fish on it.

Once deciding that we were gonna fish this spot we dropped anchor and stayed put for the rest of the evening, making as little noise as possible and slowly we started catching more and more fish, eventually catching one after the other over and over. We eventually kept our limit (20) of the biggest Crappies we could catch 10-11" and kept 16 nice sized pan fish besides...then had a great fish fry.

All in all we easily caught over a hundred fish...I know we released atleast 3-4 times as many as we kept. Some fish were pretty small, but it was really fun anyways. I don't have exact numbers, but we caught 20 or so bass, a bunch of Crappies, even more pan fish, and a couple of small Walleyes to boot...And best of all, we had the place all to ourselves, there wasn't another boat in site the whole time with the exception of a few driving by! Awsome. laugh

Time of day didn't seem to matter too much, we caught fish steadily right up till we left at round 10:00pm.

On a side note, the Carp and Suckers are really going good down on the Red Lake River here in town. I was down a couple of times for just a couple of hours and had steady action both times with non stop bites fishing along the shore line in the shallower slower moving water.

Well that's my report, hoefully I'll have a good Walleye report for ya'll after the first day of opener here in Thief River Falls.

Talk to you later.

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Who will be sticking around the Thief River Falls area for opener?

Anybody plan on starting at midnight?

I don't plan on fishing too hard this coming weekend, as I've got alot of other stuff to get done too. But I was thinking I'd try the west side below the dam for an hour or so after midnight, then during the course of the weekend, hit a few spots on the Thief north of town.

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Yep, I'll be down there for the opener at midnight tonight... although I'm not to sure the late night bite is gonna be all that good this year. We'll see, I haven't had a chance to test that theory yet, but the water is still a little more stained than I would like for night fishing?

Who knows maybe I'll have my limit by 1:00am like last year.

Talk to you later. Good luck... grin

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So... how did you guys do?

I'll be back home over Memorial Weekend more than likely... up to the cabin for some quad riding, and I'll probably dip a minny or two as well...

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Sorry for the late reply, but I pretty much stunk it up! frown I managed to catch a few (3) small Walleyes on opening night, 2 measuring around 12" and 1 right around 14"...all released. I also caught too many Rock Bass to count, all were absolutely huge though, so it wasn't all bad, but still.

I ran out of minnows at about 2:00am, losing a majority of them to missed fish and the others to poor casts in the dark! grin

Besides the 3 walleye I did land, I had a couple of other "good" fish on, but they weren't hooked good enough to land...Not sure what they were, but they felt bigger than the big rock bass I was catching, and one broke the surface a ways out that I know wasn't a rock bass anyways.

All in all, it was o.k. as far as having action the entire time, but couldn't seal the deal and bring in enough keepers to bring home.

The first two walleyes and most of the rock bass were caught right below the dam on the east side, with the 14" walleye being caught below the little island area just down from the dam, along with the other "bigger" fish that got off.

I tried half heartedly for a couple of hours during the day on Saturday and Sunday with no success at some of my other typical "good spring spots" down river from the dam, so where are they? Hmmmmm....

So, I guess it wasn't really good for me, but once the river levels off and the water temps come up a bit...game on!

Good luck... wink

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Sorry for the late report. I didn't make it out at midnight as I had hoped. I did make it out for a couple hours on Saturday and Sunday. I fished up the Thief River a ways, and caught a few northerns and a couple smaller walleyes (10 and 12 inches). Nothing to write home about, but getting out fishing beats doing most other things.

Good luck when you're home Matt, maybe I'll see you out on the river somewhere.

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  • 8 months later...

Hey Joe. Steven's Point WI.? Are you headed over here to fish?

Folks in this part of the country are kinda tight lipped about the bite. Add this to the fact that we don't have much for fishable water between here and Crookston, and there just isn't much chatter.

An hour north of here we have Lake of the Woods. That's where a good majority of the folks in our area do their winter fishing.

Come spring, after the flood waters recede, and the fishing opener gets rolling, you'll see a little more banter on here about local fishing reports.

Myself, I'm seriously giving some thought to running a little Red Lake River Float Guiding service this year. We've got pretty terrific smallmouth, and catfish in our river here, along with good numbers of walleyes in high water years. I'd like the chance to make a little fun money while taking people out on the river.

Perhaps you're interested???

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  • 1 month later...

Hey Guys! Welcome to Spring river 2010! I am on the RLR in Crookston and just wondering if people have been finding any catfish action around the area yet?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello again! I was out on the 14th and got into some nice 3-4# channels in Crookston! it is very exciting I hope I get that big one this year laugh

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Yea this place is a little dusty so I figured I better create another account seeing as I forgot my old password and stuff. I've been fishing in the Crookston area.... mostly in town been hittin the small channels pretty good... I caught five one night and a buddy caught one decent 6 or 7 pounder. I've been tryin a few places out of town and have yet to find a good spot outside of town...

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Hey Guys, going to be working this summer up at Agassiz and wondering what the fishing is like at Thief Lake or if there is any other small holes around for fishing. I am willing to drive an hour or two as well. If you don't want to respond to this thread feel free to email me at jeremymaslowski at yahoo dot com.

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Hayes Lake SP is not too far away. I have tried it a couple of times with very little luck though.

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Thief Lake as far as I know...doesn't have a fishery so to say. The Red Lake River in Thief River Falls south of town, and the Thief River north of town are good enough if you give it a good going over. Plus Lake of the Woods, The Red River of the North, Red Lake, etc... Are all an hour or two of drive time away.

Good luck.

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if the waters highenough you can fish at the farms pool outlet, or even further down that ditch as it empties into the river. Otherwise down at the dam in trf can be good at times.

There used to be some northerns and suckers out at thief lake, but unfortunately the dnr for some stupid reasons decided to poison the lake and kill off all the fish so there is nothing left there.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 5 months later...

Fished maple tonight cought 3 nice eyes and had some crappie fun as well 81/2 inches of ice. The only thing bad was the house next to me was so loud it sounded like they were having a party. Some people just don't know when to keep it down. Oh well it was still a good day on the lake.

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Sounds like pretty good fishing Maplebay, approximately where were you on the lake? I'm not looking for a spot, just wondering about the ice. I usually fish over by the outlet, and occasionally around breezy point.

I'll be headed up to lake of the woods on saturday, but thinking hard about hitting maple on sunday for some crappies for my grand-daughter to eat.

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fishing not posting! There's people fishing, as evidenced by the fishhouses out on the lakes already! I thought I was going to have the snowmobile tomorrow and have ANY number of lakes to try, but nope. Maybe I'll borrow my in-laws and try island lake. I never had much luck there this summer, but I'll give it a try. I had better luck there last year than anyone I talked to, but you never know until you get out there!

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Without a doubt, I prefer to be out fishing as opposed to posting on here. There are a number of reasons I asked about current ice conditions down there.

First, Maple is just over 50 miles from where I live, not in my back yard.

Secondly, as I'm sure you know, ice thicknesses vary quite drastically especially this year.

Third, I wasn't looking for any particular spot (I have my own spots I like to fish down there), just any unsafe ice conditions he may have noticed (i.e. drilled a hole and found only 3 inches of ice).

Good luck fishing, and maybe I'll see you down on one of the smaller lakes in your area this winter.

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Made it out to a local lake today...

full-31888-4311-086_2.jpg

The biggest northern had a treble hook sticking out the side through the stomach, and another in the stomach! Must've been one of those quick-strike rigs.

-The lake I was on only still had 5 inches of good/clear ice and 3 inches of white ice.

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