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St Cloud Fishing Reports


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Nice photos everyone. Looks like the fish are still biting. I love the Nice walleye pic- great job!

Im looking on getting out this afternoon, try some new lakes in the area. Cant pass up this warm weather.

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Not only is that a nice walleye! I can't believe he was able to land that with panfish gear. That takes talent! Nice job!!!

Nels

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Went out this afternoon in search of some gills. Found them in about 20 ft suspended bout 10 ft off bottom. The bigger gills made you work for them but lots of small ones were active. Beautiful day to be out...

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This little guy was hungry as well IMG_4819_zps7e31f93d.jpg

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Bass are always a fun fight when your after the pannies smile you were very fortunate to get out on such a beautyfull day wink How was the water under the snow?

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The water under the snow is getting bad after yesterday. It was becoming a sloppy mess. Few more days of this weather and going be standing in water out there frown

But warm weather will bring open water smile

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Hit the chain yesterday around 4....vexilar dead until 6..then Chinese fire drill until dark. It was after dark though before these big boys swam through. We were fishing in 11ft with the ice. We ended catching 30 or so with some gills mixed in...kept these four for dinner....fishing has been good on the chain this year...just weird bite windows and aggressiveness...must be the ice and pressure it has put on them this year. My brother and I were surprised to mark these fish this shallow and how light they bite. Most of the fish caught on small tungsten jigs with spikes.

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Interesting hole configuration. Never seen it done that way. I suppose tangles aren't much concern at 11ft.

Well done!

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Yeah I think we had one tangle all night..in shallow water the fl28 has a good coverage area. My bro doesn't have a vex so that's how we have to do it...thanks

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Got back out yesterday after some gills. The bite was pretty active all day. Found them suspended again in about 20 ft and had to work them up to about 5 ft below the ice and they would hit.

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Didn't find any panfish today. Only found 4 tiny Northern and a little LG mouth.Here's a couple of them.

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Tom Sawyers guide service was a no show this morning.I hoped you would show me your discovered spots.That's ok il forgive ya smile

Glad to get on some Northern for a change,different fish makes it more interesting. cool

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Tom Sawyers guide service was a no show this morning.I hoped you would show me your discovered spots.

Your check never cleared..........

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Since Rick may not be posting a report this week, and know that many of you, myself included, look forward to them, thought I would throw one in. Jr. and I had a "big pannie" trip to the Bemidji/Blackduck area fizzle, so we hit up one of our favorite local haunts instead. Have never fished this particular area before, but it always looked fishy and decided to give it a go. On this lake, which is pretty much void of greenery, this time of year the fish are in transition and somewhat pulling off the basins and starting to congregate on the edges for a longer period of time. We expected a primetime bite, but still did show up few hours earlier than normal and were on fish most of the time. full-27018-43404-2014_03_1522.53.11.jpg

Initially the bite was pretty tough, first had to figure if we were marking...... crappies or gills, secondly what and how they wanted. It turned out gills, and waxies or plastics jigged with like a parkinson shake did the trick.

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Tried slight twitches, big swings, pounding, holding still, but these big fish simply wanted the shake; and the higher you could get them to chase....the better.

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When darkness finally hit, the crappies, showed up on cue, played the minnow dead sticked with a waxie jigged game, and fished until the phone call from the boss came telling us to stop. We had to leave marking crappies all over the graph. While a few of the pods of gills cruised in suspended, most were laying low. The crappies were all over the board, anywhere from right off the bottom to about 1/2 way down the water column. If you have never used it, adjustable zoom is a pretty nice option for this type of bite.

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As usual, the ultimate key to success was tungsten, tungsten....some more tungsten....then to keep jr. warm, comfortable, jacked up on high fructose corn syrup, and alien super hero cartoons on the computer wink

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The warm up knocked a lot of the snow down, the cool down firmed the top layer back up, and travel, where we were at, at least, was great. Headed to LOW tomorrow to chase pout and tullies....and suppose a few of those dead minnow eating bug eyed "rough fish" cousins grin Ice is still crazy thick and as long as the shorelines hold, we should have a great end of the ice season......

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I had a similar trip on a different local lake minus the crappies. I stayed until sunset but it was a beautiful day out with plenty of gills in the 7 to 8 inch range. On the lake I was on it seemed there was a northern or two in every hole I dropped the camera down.

Travel conditions, I walked out, walking was nice and easy because the snow cover is almost gone. How ever the old road had frozen with 5 in. of water under 1 in. of ice not good for 2 wheel drive.

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Great report PB!!!

Rick or I will put together a weekend report, tonight sometime, we'll be back on the ice by 10am, somewhere today again.......?????? New lake, new challenge. His arm is to sore I'm sure, and I'm without photo's. frown

Catching crappies, one after the other all day long tends to do that to a guy. Our group tallied crappies well in the hundreds, with bass and sumo perch mixed in. Our focus turned to being stealthy for bull gills, as the crappies were to easy.

Hard to think it gets better, but the best ice fishing is almost here!!!

Travel on area lakes is fine, avoid the roads as much as you can.

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  • 'we have more fun' FishingMN Builders

very good report PB!

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Very good report Pb smile

Did make it out this weekend, didn't really feel lile going out but friends drug me to the lake anyway smile

Saturday was lights out, just as Tom said, lots of bulls and slabs, and even a jumbo perch mixed in. We were fishing the Chain, just off a shallow feeding flat. We focused on the 6-15ft depths.

Today was much slower. We started off on the Chain in the same spot as yesterday, only two of our group of seven could manage to catch fish grin the rest of the group struggled... I never find it to be much fun if I'm the only one catching... I mean it's ok for a little bit, rubbing it in and all grin but that gets old quick wink... off to lake number two in hopes of a better bite for all.

We got to Big lake just after 2pm, found a couple pods of fish right away. But just like on the first lake, only one of us could catch nice fish... this time it was Little Red crazy he had a few quality gills laying on the ice before I knew what was happening. He must have a magic horseshoe stuck somewhere crazy

Overall it was a pretty good weekend... got to spend time with some great friends and got to eat some good food winkfull-26589-43451-20140315_130301.jpg

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The gill in the third to last pic was the big one for the weekend, it was just a hair over 9.5in grin still alive and swiming....

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Went out and hit Mayhew lake again this weekend and did well taking home about a dozen jumbo perch and we took home 6 tonight. found fish on top of the sandbar in 5-6 FOW. Both days was great to get out and fish. Today naturboy milked my wife at church about where we were fishing,and when we get out to the spot who is the only person on the Ice????? naturboy ha ha ha , was great to see you out there my friend glad you got something. we did ok today,perch,northrens,and the wife caught one little cigar sized walleye. That's nice to see that they are still in that lake after the winter kill last year. Good sign I would say. full-46894-43481-img_20140316_210348.jpgeveryone Have a goodnight and God Bless

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The bite is hot guys.. Went to a local 80 acre lake and caught anywhere from 50-60 crappies today. Lots of 8 inch fish with the occasional 9-9.5 mixed in. Kept a few for the pan. Interesting thing is my family has had a cabin on this lake for 20+ years and this was my first time ice fishing it full-45008-43512-image.jpg

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I went out this morning to see how much trouble it is to drag the fish trap through the new snow, answer, Lots! I did manage a few jumbos for the trouble but don't know if I'd do it again. The biggest one today was just over 11". full-44005-43603-image.jpg

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Made it out to Clearwater with a few friends today to enjoy the nice wsrm weather. Lots of slush and pockets of water under what snow remains. Access at Bj's was still in good enough shape that we drove out.

Bite was hit and miss for most of the afternoon. At times the fish would bite like crazy, and other times we would go for quite a strech with out hitting quality fish.

We focused our efforts just of the edge of a shallow flat. 7-12ft seemed like the best depth, got a few shallower and a few deeper. The key was to find the clumps of nice green weeds, the live weeds held the numbers wink

There was nothing real special about the spot we hit, the break off the flat ran a hundred yds in either direction from us. We must have seemed like a friendly bunch... had a whole mess of people we didn't know fishing our little grid of holes through out the day crazyfull-26589-43609-20140320_103726.jpg

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The bigger fish were tough to come by, but every now and then a piggy would hit smile

Here is the oddity for the day full-26589-43616-20140320_141738.jpg looks like this fish got lucky at one point in its life... lost a bit of flesh, but lived to see another day.

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Just wanted to add that the larger fish, were relating more towards bottom, only turning positive with persistence, and at times.... making them mad.

I found that getting my presentation buried in the weeds; not even fishing the top of the school, but dropping it to bottom and waiting a few seconds, then pounding my jig up just beyond the first one or two bottom fish. This technique iced better quality fish for me.

Hole hopping our weed holes of the grid, was another key to putting together my fish fry for tomorrow. Great day on the ice whenever you don't need a house to even block the wind. Being mobile, is made easy at 40 plus degrees.

Glad I didn't forget the sunscreen!

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