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How was Leech this weekend?


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Three of us were on Leech Saturday Feb 7th from 9am to 4:30pm. Accessed out from the pine-point area. Went out by ourselves a little ways away from the crowd and did ok. The wind was a PAIN in the A$$! Kept 17 perch between 10-13 inches and 3 bonus walleye's 15-17 inches. Caught a lot of small perch as well, missed some fish too. There were fish on the Vex most of the day, but they were really fussy. Tried every jig and bait combo you could think of, with no real pattern found. Patience was the key. If it got slow in one hole, I would walk over to another and try it for a while. I'm guessing the fishing is going to stay tough until the March warm-up. I'm going out of a different access to a different area next week to do a little scouting. I'll drop a new report after next weekend.

Good Luck to all.

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Me and a buddy fished Leech on Friday, Feb 6. We tried some areas around Goose Island and ended up staying put on our 4th location in between Goose and Ottertail Pt. Lots of small perch to sort through, but we kept 9 jumbos. Also had one eater walleye and another big slot fish 25" that we put back.

We had sleds and portables, the vehicle locations are still pretty limited out there. Some patches of slush, but seems to be getting better. We shoveled out an area for the house, but then had to deal with 2 inches of standing water. Good luck.

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3 of us out Saturday and Sunday off Stoney. plenty of 5-8" perch, but they moved around a lot. Never found any over 9". 9 eyes between us total, 2 keepers, and a 25". Pretty slow. We did find that to get fish to at least stay long enough to get a bite we had to work our baits pretty aggressively. During the day we could see the fish down the hole and that was the only way to get them to hang around for a little while. bigger baits for the perch and smaller for the eyes was the general rule it seemed.

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Thanks for the info. I do agree that the Perch fishing will heat up with the March warm-up...I figure Perch this time of the year are just a bonus. It sounds like it was slow in general this weekend. I was out a little on Sunday morning and marked fish the whole time and only caught a few small ones. At least I was not totally alone in that regards!

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Budboy, fish Perch in 9-12 feet of water, maybe a little deeper if you are in Walker Bay/Cedar Point. In a few weeks as it gets warmer and no snow on the ice they will be in 3-6 feet of water. The key to success this past weekend was to stay mobile, move until you find good fish.

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It is raining here. Drizzle all day and about 35 degrees. It is raining steadily right now at 6:30 and is still 35 degrees. Forecast is for above freezing temps and rain all night. There is enough ice that it won't hurt it yet. Should put a good dent in the snow though and when it freezes again you should be able to drive right over top of what is left. I will report back when the rain is done to let you know what actually happens

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Thank you! When I catch my 9 jumbos on Mille lacs, I won't need any eater walleyes to add the the meal! Hee Hee!

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Thank you! When I catch my 9 jumbos on Mille lacs, I won't need any eater walleyes to add the the meal! Hee Hee!

Then you should really just quietly head to Mille Lacs and stop being a jerk. Some people... jeezz

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Mille lacs is going gangbusters if you want 4-5 inchers it will be a couple 3 weeks before you start getting any #s of true jumbos.

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Flats are hot right now if you know where to go!!

Golly jeezz Wally..... I'm quietly tip towing over there Thursday!

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I fished Leech on Feb 6th-8th. We fished just off of Adventure North Resort on Friday. Perch we caught 5-6 keeper perch and did well on the walleye that night with 6 keepers. Saturday we took sleds out near Big Hardwood point and fished near a pressure ridge and absolutly hammered the jumbo perch. We had 8 guys (4 fishing seriously and 4 drinking seriously) we managed to catch around 90 keepers with at least that many thrown back. We also managed to catch a 23.5" walleye and a northern. The next day was slower. We hit Big Hardwood again, went through sucker bay and Bowmans Point. We ended up back at Big Hardwood again in the evening and at around 4:30 the jumbos showed up again. I managed to catch my limit both days. This is my 4th year of going to Leech and we have always managed to catch very nice jumbos.

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There are plenty of nice jumbos in Leech and for numbers, I have always done better there than on Mille Lacs. Of course it used to be easy to fill a pail with ML jumbos, but that time has long sinced past.

Also, ML has the bigger ones 12-14 inchers are possible here. But there are plenty in Leech that are 11-12 and sometimes to 13. Plus the eye fishing has been alot better the last few years.

Love both lakes, Milly and Leech. But right now, Leech seems to have the better bite.

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We were fishing 17-19 feet off of Big Hardwood. One thing that I forgot to mention is on Sunday when we started hammering the perch again we had 3 guys and around 15 holes drilled. We would fish for 10 min. or untill we hit 2 jumbos and then move. I caught 10 jumbos in 30 min that way. We didn't have to move very far.

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Nice report ISU... we have fished Hardwood during open water season but not in winter.

How big was the pressure ridge?

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  • Your Responses - Share & Have Fun :)

    • smurfy
      Looks to me like Leech brought his chair home!!😅😆
    • Brianf.
      I'm not there, so I can't tell exactly what's going on but it looks like a large area of open water developed in the last day with all of the heavy snow on the east side of wake em up Narrows. These two photos are from my Ring Camera facing north towards Niles Point.  You can see what happened with all of snow that fell in the last three days, though the open water could have been wind driven. Hard to say. .  
    • SkunkedAgain
      Black Bay had great ice before but a few spots near rockpiles where there were spots of open water. It looks like the weight of the snow has created a little lake in the middle of the bay.  
    • LakeofthewoodsMN
      On the south end...   Thanks to some cold spring weather, ice fishing continues strong for those still ice fishing.  The bite remains very good.  Most resorts have pulled their fish houses off for the year, however, some still have fish houses out and others are allowing ATV and side by sides.  Check social media or call ahead to your favorite resort for specifics. Reports this week for walleyes and saugers remain excellent.   A nice mix of jumbo perch, pike, eelpout, and an occasional crappie, tullibee or sturgeon being reported by anglers. Jigging one line and using a live minnow on the second line is the way to go.  Green, glow red, pink and gold were good colors this week.     Monster pike are on a tear!  Good number of pike, some reaching over 45 inches long, being caught using tip ups with live suckers or dead bait such as smelt and herring in 8 - 14' of water.   As always, work through a resort or outfitter for ice road conditions.  Safety first always. Fish houses are allowed on the ice through March 31st, the walleye / sauger season goes through April 14th and the pike season never ends. On the Rainy River...  The river is opened up along the Nelson Park boat ramp in Birchdale, the Frontier boat ramp and Vidas boat ramp.  This past week, much of the open water skimmed over with the single digit overnight temps.   Areas of the river have popped open again and with temps getting warmer, things are shaping up for the last stretch through the rest of the spring season, which continues through April 14th.   Very good numbers of walleyes are in the river.  Reports this week, even with fewer anglers, have been good.  When temps warm up and the sun shines, things will fire up again.   Jigs with brightly colored plastics or jigs with a frozen emerald shiner have been the desired bait on the river.  Don't overlook slow trolling crankbaits upstream as well.   Good reports of sturgeon being caught on the river as well.  Sturgeon put the feed bag on in the spring.  The bite has been very good.  Most are using a sturgeon rig with a circle hook loaded with crawlers or crawlers / frozen emerald shiners. Up at the NW Angle...  Ice fishing is winding down up at the Angle.  Walleyes, saugers, and a number of various species in the mix again this week.  The bite is still very good with good numbers of fish.  The one two punch of jigging one line and deadsticking the second line is working well.   Check with Angle resorts on transport options from Young's Bay.  Call ahead for ice road guidelines.  
    • CigarGuy
      With the drifting, kind of hard to tell for sure, but I'm guessing about a foot and still lightly snowing. Cook end!
    • PSU
      How much snow did you get on Vermilion? 
    • Mike89
      lake here refroze too...  started opening again yesterday with the wet snow and wind...  very little ice left today...
    • Hookmaster
      A friend who has a cabin between Alex and Fergus said the lake he's on refroze. He texted me a pic from March 12th when it was open and one from 23rd when it wasn't. 🤯
    • SkunkedAgain
      I don't think that there has been any ice melt in the past few weeks on Vermilion. Things looked like a record and then Mother Nature swept in again.   I'll give my revised guess of April 21st
    • leech~~
      As I get older it's really not just about sending bullets down range.  Some of it's just the workmanship of the gun and the wow factor. The other two guns I have really wanted which I'll never have now because of their price, is a 8mm Jap Nambu and 9mm German Luger.   Just thought they always looked cool!  
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