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Well, I hope the rest of you had a better opener than me. Went to greenwood lake to get some lakers. Got stuck a couple times, lost a few things, broke a few more things cry Finally get out to where we want to be, drill 2 holes and the auger dies. That took care of covering alot of area and depths. Had 2 hits, but missed them both. Marked ALOT of cisco, but I couldn't get them to bite to save my life!

Had planned to fish trout lake today to get some rainbows, but the auger took care of that plan. It was like a replay of last year...skunked on greenwood, unable to fish trout the next day.

How'd everyone else do?

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My auger died too, but there was another in the group. 2 nice Splake and 1 nicer Rainbow.

And I was eyeing up the hand auger, but that nah. Doesn't take up that much space, will be coming with next time.

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Fished Sat & Sun up the gunflint. Caught many smaller lakers and one giant one. Wanted a pic, but camera battery was dead mad So all I have are the measurements and memory - 37.5" length with 22" girth! My guess was 20+ lbs.

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Yep, my brand new hand auger was sitting in my dad's garage. The good news is, we might be canceling our trip to winni next month in exchange for another crack at some trout. My dad stayed an extra night, and ended up driving to trout lake to check things out. A lot of people catching a lot of rainbows. Go figure.

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Went to birch. Slow for everybody on the lake that i talked to.

We got 1 brookie and 1 bow each about 15" (in 2 days of fishing)LOTS OF SNOW IN THE WOODS

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I've been fishing Greenwood now for 8 years and each year is getting worse. Not sure if they just have plenty of forage or what is going on.

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Fished Sat & Sun up the gunflint. Caught many smaller lakers and one giant one. Wanted a pic, but camera battery was dead mad So all I have are the measurements and memory - 37.5" length with 22" girth! My guess was 20+ lbs.

Wow! I'm sure that was a blast to haul in. Congrats.

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Thanks! Biggest one I've managed to get through the ice. About 25 min to land and release. Glad I used the 8" auger instead of the 6" wink

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We caught 12 splake and rainbows. 10 on Sat. with 5 of us. 1 on Sunday and 1 on Monday by myself.

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My dad told me that mink lake was packed on Sunday and Monday. He said kimball, however, was empty. I'm assuming people avoid it because it's overrun with perch?

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It seems like it was busier than usual for trout opener this year...I'm surprised to hear about kimball.

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Supposedly perch are in mink now too frown There still are trout in kimball though. I had great success last june on rainbows...but caught my share of perch and rock bass too. It can be frustrating trying to fish trout though, when perch are nibbling your bait the 2nd it gets down the hole.

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last year i called the Finland Fisheries office about Hare lake near Isabella. same subject regarding perch. at the time because of budjet cuts reclimation of trout lake programs were delayed. another reason was the chemical used for that program was not available for a reason i cant recal right now.

i'm assuming the status of that program is the same. a few years ago some lakes in the Finland/Isabella were re-claimed due to extremly high populations of perch. those lakes are now thriving well with splake and rainbows. hopefully the funding and the chemicals used for this will once more be an ongoing program.

in Hare Lake's case the DNR is stocking brookies with a high population of perch present. even if they had the means to reclaim this lake they could not do it for a creek runs out of this lake that contains trout and they would be killed as well. good luck.

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We were up by Ely, but could caught our limits at least 3 times over on trout (of course we didn't keep them all). It was consistent action every spot we tried. There's no way that can be normal. I figured it was just good timing on our part.

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Hare lake is a great example. I've ice fished it once and couldn't keep the perch off the hook, no matter where in the water column I fished. I did catch a big holdover brown trout though. DNR should stick with the browns, could grow big on a perch diet.

Anyway, anyone ice fish west bearskin or clearwater? Gonna come back up at the end of february and maybe give 1 of those lakes a try.

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Relatively inexperienced trout fisherman here. My son and I caught 1 rainbow and 2 splake on Echo lake out Finland on Saturday and missed a few more. Hope to try again this season.

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last year i called the Finland Fisheries office about Hare lake near Isabella. same subject regarding perch. at the time because of budjet cuts reclimation of trout lake programs were delayed. another reason was the chemical used for that program was not available for a reason i cant recal right now. ...

The chemical is Fintrol (Antimycin is the active ingredient). The DNR uses that in this part of the state because it is better suited to lakes with lower alkalinity than Rotenone. The company the DNR had on contract went out of business. Because the chemical is a pesticide it is regulated both at the State and Federal level thus the need for the specific contract to get the chemical.

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Relatively inexperienced trout fisherman here. My son and I caught 1 rainbow and 2 splake on Echo lake out Finland on Saturday and missed a few more. Hope to try again this season.

Drove by there early sat am, couldn't believe how many cars/trucks on the side of the road. Never seen that many vehicles.

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Yep, I've never seen so many people up for trout opener. Definitely impacted the fishing for us, but we still managed to get a 4 person limit with kicker fish over 1.5 days. Got an 18" rainbow which was delicious last night! I think we caught 28 rainbow and splake total, I caught 15 on the hot lure. We should have had close to 40 fish but the other guys lost a ton. Here's a tip, if you're losing a lot of fish consider changing the lure to something that might give you a better hooking percentage...you might just be surprised at what those trout will hit.

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I suppose with the lack of quality ice and snow throughout the state winter trout opener sounded rather appealing to many folks. And the Arrowhead it the place to be for winter trout. All in all it seems like most people were successful and had a good time. That's what it's all about.

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We drove by and saw all the people on Echo Saturday morning as well and headed on to Hare. Should have just stayed at Echo from the start because we ended up back there early afternoon. I ended up catching nine(8 rainbow, 1 splake, largest was 15") while my buddies lost all their bites. I had luck with a couple of different horizontal jigs tipped with waxies on a noodle rod. Very tentative bite and that combo seemed to do the trick.

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Echo is a nice little lake. I've only caught tiny little splake in the winter, but have caught some nice ones in the fall.

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  • 'we have more fun' FishingMN Creators

Thanks for the reports and pictures.

I think the lack of snow and sketchy ice on the bigger lakes might have congratulated anglers this year.

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  • Your Responses - Share & Have Fun :)

    • leech~~
      Nope not me.  May want to go nextdoor and ask around?  
    • 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
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