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Annandale-Buffalo-Hutchinson fishing reports


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Avid.... You have any pointers for me for sunfish? My wife and I are planning to go out tmrw and we have no clue where to go. You can pm me if u wish. Don't want spots just looking for lakes? Thanks!

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Hey Bambito,

The best advice I can give you is to look up some lakes on the DNR Lakefinder website. We have quite a few lakes around here with bluegills, but the key is to find decent ones. That is a real trick.

Unless I know you, I usually don't give out names of lakes. I have spent hours of research and fishing and I can tell you that it is very difficult to find lakes that have lots of bluegills over 8 inches locally. When I do find them, I don't say boo to anyone.

My reasoning for that is because for a sunfish to get 8 inches long it takes 7-9 years. People around here go bonkers for decent sunfish and will go back over and over taking every one home. They will not let any of the big ones go back. Once a lake is hammered, it takes another 7-9 years before another year class gets that big.

My advice to this, is to go ahead and fish them, but don't keep all the big ones. If you are going to keep a limit, maybe keep a 1/3 of the bigger ones and the rest of your keepers be smaller. If you do release the bigger ones, try to release the males. They will pass on their genetics and will protect the nests from smaller males.

It is a vicious cycle. It has become a rare thing to catch nice gills and that is why people go crazy when a lake does finally give some up.

Crappies grow faster and cycle quicker. It is not as crucial for them to release the larger ones.

Sorry for the rant Bambito. I am sure you are a good Sportsman and this was not intended to offend. Just passing on some info.

Avid

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No problem at all! We did end up going out yesterday and we found some smaller ones but found some real nice bucketmouths! It kept the wife and I entertained for the afternoon! Havent been out in awhile so it was just nice to get out. I remember when I was young every summer I would stay a week up at my grandparents in Alexandria and it was nothing for us to go out and get huge sunfish all day long. Now days if I guy gets a 10 incher he shares a picture of it on this site! Pretty sad.

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I get so frustrated with people. The first thing they say when I talk about this to them. "If I don't keep them someone else will."

If I had a $1 for every time I heard that, I would be wealthy.

My dad is one that will say this. He gets frustrated with me when I pitch a big bull gill back in the water. I just tell him I am trying to conserve the resource and keep good breeding stock available in the lake. It is no different than what they are doing with walleyes and the slot limits.

Glad to hear you had some action.

I fish gills quite a bit and have only caught three 10 inch plus gills in my life. They are rare, especially around here. I compare a 10 inch gill to a 30 inch walleye.

Avid

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Not sure how many of you get In-Fisherman magazine, but they have a good article on how to produce Big Bluegills in the new issue.

It talks about how to produce big bluegills in ponds and goes over in detail why it is so important to release the Big males. They say all male sunfish over 8 inches should be released to give your pond the best chance at producing consistent year classes of huge bluegills.

Now I know our local lakes are not managed ponds, but I just want to educate people and hopefully those people will educate another sportsman and eventually it will become more common like people releasing walleyes over 20 inches.

Avid

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just shake my head when guys get so hung up on only catching walleyes and basically quit fishing come mid-summer.

I have an absolute blast chasing pannies and catching big pike and bass as well.

It won't be long and the eyes will start showing up again on the end of the line and the lakes will be virtually empty.

Can't wait!

Avid

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  • 2 weeks later...

I came back from college and fished a local private lake, and did great. I was completely blown away, thinking that it would be a long day with this cold front. Instead it got fish in a feeding mood, and brought them in shallow. I was fishing for bass and was using a 6" swimbait with a 1oz jighead, and I was getting bass after bass. Then the wind died down and fishing slowed. Then a big gust came through and it was then I got a smaller northern 21" and figured it was just luck. I was fishing an area about 1/2 an acre of broken trees and logs. I casted to one that was surrounded in pondweed in about 3' and set the hook I though was a log until it started moving. It hugged the bottom as I muscled it in on my heavy gear. Once it saw the boat it turned around and just started going, I had no control over it. I'm guessing it was about 38" and 15 pounds, and I cranked my drag to max. It just pulled my line out as it pleased, got into some weeds and spit the hook. After that I was finding lots of pike in about 3', and I ended up getting 5 more, the biggest a 31". All were on the swimbait, and It is pretty well chewed up now. It wasn't a day of super easy fishing, it was a day where when I put a bait in front of a fish, it smashed it. It was a great day.

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I am always amazed by how agressive August crappies can be. They are committing sucide right now on wind blown shorelines.

Those crazy white tipped fish are showing up too along with the big pike.

My favorite two months of boat fishing are here. Little pressure and fish biting.

Avid

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  • 2 weeks later...

Crappies and walleyes were biting in the rain on Saturday! Needless to say it was pretty boat less out there.

Now I need to get my boat dry!

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I got up saturday morning thinking I was going bass fishing.I talked to my dad and plans changed and we were going to meet and fish for panfish. The panfish had different plans,so we trolled for pike.The 27" walleye that ate my husky jerk didn't know my plans either.[moral;don't make plans]

Saturday afternoon my brother came over and we went out trolling. We boated 2 bass,6 pike and 3 walleyes.

Sunday afternoon I went out trolling and caught 1 pike,3 bass and 7 walleyes.

Three different lakes and I caught walleyes on all of them, I guess the fall bite has started.

workin'

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Nice job workin!

I took my boys out yesterday. 7 and 3. My oldest caught his first crappie jigging. The youngest got to reel a couple of them in.

It was a fun short outing. Only boat on the lake. Sure beat staying home and watching the poor excuse for a Viking team.

Avid

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I talked with a guy coming off with his kid. They were empty handed. He said there were 20 groups of guys lined up along this particular spot and everyone was taking 100 yard shots, dogs out of control etc.....

I counted 53 trucks at the main access and about 30 more at another one. Had to have been well over 100 groups out there.

Gotta love that private land when you can get it to avoid this kind of nonsense Lol.......

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I was out on Pelican on the opener. I got 4 ducks. I'd call it fair to slow. Some groups did a bit of shooting and other groups were pretty quiet. I wasn't in the best spot with the wind that day. Not alot of big flocks, mostly 1-4 in a flock.

A fair amount of hunters where I was, but it's opener, gotta expect that on a big public duck lake. It should quiet down a bit now. I slept in on Sunday.

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I hunted just off pelican on a little pond and it sounded like a war zone as soon as it was light enough to shoot. I couldnt imagine how any ducks got off there alive.

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I skipped Sat. but made it out to Pelican Sunday morning. Probably half as many guys as opener out there. The closest group was 275-300yds away. Ended up with 2BW Teal and a nice Drake widgeon with some decent color. Kinda your typical 2nd weekend outing. Not alot of birds but a few around.

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Just think if some guy was to dump 20 bushels of corn on to the lake. Is the lake off limits for baiting?

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Someone asked about duck hunting on a Lake in Wright county, so a few of us replied how it went. Guess there isn't a hunting report section for the area.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Going Down,

No, seriously I have no idea. I put my boat away this past weekend. Prior to that I had mid 50's the week before.

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On thursday at Collinwood it was 44 and on Stella saturday it was 45.

Both trips the walleye fishing was on the tough side for me,the pike were going better.

workin'

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Thanks guys.

I heard the crappies made their shift deep now for the winter.

I have not heard a real good lake report in quite some time.

A fish here and there.

I hope to get out this weekend.

Avid

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  • 4 weeks later...

Like it or not, the first walleyes were taken through the ice yesterday. I can't beleive how fast the ice can form. 2-3 inches, but spotty.

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  • The title was changed to Annandale-Buffalo-Hutchinson fishing reports

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