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2020 Ottertail-Battle Lake-Perham-Fergus Falls area Fishing Reports


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Fished same area Friday 4pm thru Sunday morning 28 - 30 ft of water, 2 guys

Friday night 7 eyes couple nice perch kept

Saturday 3 eyes and 16 perch kept

Sunday morning pretty slow

Several small eyes and perch as well, enough to keep us busy

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So ottertail is fishable?? Or were you fishing a s!smaller lake in the ottertail area? Fished Saturday afternoon.. 4 northerns on Ida, but excited to give ottertail a try soon!

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8" on Saturday approx. might have been a little less, but got really good ice making weather yesterday. has to be getting close to drive-able. if your walking, bring cleats.

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On Ottertail we are talking. Last night off point, we caught 6 from 4p-6pm in 14 feet. only kept 3....lots of small walleyes stealing our minnows.

Only saw 1 other fisherman out there (it was a tuesday i guess) easily 10-12 inches and i fully expect trucks out this weekend.

clear good ice, best ive seen in years.

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7 on wednesday. seems like the fatheads are working better than shiners/suckers. anyone else noticing a bait preference on ottertail so far?

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How the ice as of today? Planning on heading out Sunday...new to the area. Excited to say the least.

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Fished Ottertail last Saturday. Tried spot fishing off of Amor for Perch but the water was still to dirty yet.Picked up a couple perch and some smaller walleyes.The ice was around 11 inches in that area.For the evening bite we moved over towards Guzzlers and there were people driving trucks pulling huge ice castles over there.Little over a foot of ice.It was pretty dead all day until the last hour or so of sunlight then it picked up.Kept a dozen perch and 6 walleyes.Caught a nice 17 incher and it slipped through my hands and went head first down the hole and couldn't grab it! Other than that it was a pretty good day.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Fished Thursday night through Sunday morning from 34'-16'. 9 walleye and a bunch of perch. Very slow fishing. 14" of ice in the 3 spots we fished.

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I was out yesterday afternoon and there is a LOT of water on the ice. I would strongly discourage anyone from driving on the ice until it has a chance to harden back up. As a matter of fact I was a bit uneasy last night driving the ATV across a couple miles of ice in the dark, even though I was following my trail from earlier. I know the ice is "safe" for ATV travel on this particular lake, but you just never know when you'll drive onto that one spot.....

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I was out yesterday and this morning. Ice seemed ok. Not the degree of washing as the last warm spell (at least where I was).

Ponded water standing on top, not to many wash holes.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Was out on Ottertail last Thursday. Drove out on the lake in a 1/2 ton out of the west access right in front of the bait shop. 16-18" of good solid ice...and that was right before we started to see these low temps. It started making ice/popping when we left the lake.

I was surprised on how FAST people were driving on the lake....I bet we saw 3 or 4 vehicles pushing 40-45mph....1 was a 3/4 ton Chevy with an ice castle. shocked

Lots of small perch, a few decent northerns that had no interest in anything besides staring at our presentations. At about 4:30 we had a school of walleyes swim through (assuming they were following the weed/sand line we were on) that also didn't want anything to do with our presentation. Made for a cold/windy & long day in a pop up with a little buddy heater.

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Fished it again yesterday. The ice heave on the west side in front of Guzzlers is fine. Made it out in my Escape no problem. About 22" of good, clear ice. Fished the first break, and ended up catching 12 good sized perch (8-10"). They preferred a red Lindy Frostee spoon tipped with a full fathead...even over the regular Frostee lure. I was there from 11:30-2:00 and caught fish the whole time. Made for a good supper!

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Amor is officially a trainwreck dont even bother going in or out of that access.

yes corner store access is fine, throw a few $$$ in the bucket inside the store please!!

fishing is slow, only 3 walleyes saturday night.. bow were you in the group on the first break by corner store/zorbaz? no one has fished there all winter, then boom there was 5 of you there saturday.

whats the deal with that?

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Amor is officially a trainwreck dont even bother going in or out of that access.

yes corner store access is fine, throw a few $$$ in the bucket inside the store please!!

fishing is slow, only 3 walleyes saturday night.. bow were you in the group on the first break by corner store/zorbaz? no one has fished there all winter, then boom there was 5 of you there saturday.

whats the deal with that?

I was in a red Quickfish literally directly out from the corner store access on the first break. Didn't really have anyone around me. I was actually a little worried about being too close to the "road" that vehicles use coming off the access. I never got the finger, or honked at so I figured I did't bother too many people.

BTW...did anyone see the Subaru out there at about 1pm? Came out off the corner store access blaring Techo music. Then, a woman in a bikini got out and her husband started taking pictures. They were out there for about ten minuets then left. I didn't quite know what to think.

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Fished a couple of lakes north of OT last weekend, and had the best day of fishing in January in years. Friday was a day full of active fish, possibly from the falling barometer all day long. The wind wasn't as bad as they forecast for Saturday, and we didn't have any issues in our portables.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Heading up to do some work on a new cabin on DEAD lake the week of

FEb9th -13th and was going to pull big shak up and set up somewhere on dead. Any info on ice conditions and heave areas would greatly be appreciated as we have never fished the lake. Thanks!

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ice is great 25-30 inches, the south access is heaved but ok. bring lots of bait since the 12 inch northerns are infested in dead. good luck

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Thanks for the info, well appreciated! Not a big fan of catchin snot rockets but I guess we will try to harvest a few of them if they are that big of a nucance.

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Thought I should put this on the site since I seen the other one on it. I caught this with my dad and three friends on Friday night on Otter Tail. Took 2 hours to catch and bring up a 8" hole with 6# test. It was 58" long. First time on the lake and what a thing to remember. Thanks Troy, Trent, and Eric for the great weekend!

full-5732-52501-sturgeonpic.jpg

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  • 'we have more fun' FishingMN Creators

Wow! I didn't known there were an sturgeon that big in ottertail.

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Last year on opener there were 2 boats fishing for them. We asked the guy how many they had caught and I was quite surprised when he said "around 20". I was a little skeptical until we saw the pictures on his phone. Just as we were about to leave he set the hook on a good one. The fish are adapting quite well it seems.

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