Still a few around...

[traveler]

Had a buddy on Red for his first time ever on the lake. So whats the first fish he catches??!

[traveler]

We also managed limits of eyes for 2 days, about 15 nice perch, biggest was 11 1/2 , and 1 pike about 7 lbs. Pretty darn good couple days, especially yesterday a.m. As the wind was blowing like crazy. Near whiteout conditions coming off the lake, haven't been in one of those for years!

Kelly, we pulled off about 2, figured it would be easier than waiting till dark. Wow...quite the drive off the lake!We missed the propane truck so we made our way along the outside of the break, couldn't see 50 feet. Had to cross another small break out there running straight out, then luckily found your other "break in the break" 1/2 way back to Beacons and got accross! Had to be an interesting nite for you guys...Thanks for the heads up on location, hope LivingtheDream does well with his 2 kids out there, I walked over and met him before we left. Got back to my house and my buddy was releasing about the fattest 19 1/2 you'd ever want to see!

Good times:)

[davidbigreelz]

nice crappie. you dont get like that too often anymore. congrats!

[Living_The_Dream]

Traveler it was good to meet you yesterday. Not a bad first day of fishing for the weather conditions. We ended up with 25 walleyes and my daughter has the big fish so far a nice 21 incher.

[cookie129]

Minnesota bound at 630 tonight is airing a show catching the elusive yet catchable upper red lake crappies. From the sounds of it they were hear to film a walleye show and stumbled upon a school of the famous yet elusive, yet catchable upper red lake crappie's

Travling across the lake earlier this year i drove down to rodgers I came across a couple of spots that looked very fishy for crappies. Makes me wonder if they stumbled on to one of those spots.

[shaky legs2]

My crappie

[bturck]

Shaky that must have been something back in the day catching these babies all day long. Sorry I missed it, especially after hearing the stories of crazy happenings from kelly

[Stan7600]

Anyone that was there for the crappies will never forget it. Stan C.

[tracker x-2]

Great to see this sure gets the blood flowing as ill be up in one of Kelly's houses next weekend!

[mikeg1]

hey Cookie what channel is that on tonite? would be cool to see.

[cookie129]

Man those were the days. Lifetime momories for sure. I'll never forget the biggest one I caught,or should I say almost caught. For some reason we had punched 10 inch holes in old minnesota. I had the vex in one of the two holes that were side by side. When I set the hook I stated reeling in. When I brought the fish to the top it saw me and turned around in the 10 inch hole. Tangled in the vex cord I new from seeing it this was the big one. As i tried to lift the vex line cord out with my left hand and rod and reel with my right the fish came out of the hole did the crappie flop and headed down the other 10 inch hole. I reached down and had it by the tail. As I squezzed with all my strengh it just kept kicking and slowly slipped out of my hand.

[shaky legs2]

Amen! Well said Stan. Lead body suits, triangulations, clamping, IBOTS, West Wind Bartender, Kelly P., Jigglestick, Labs4me, Russ & Judy, Nine Toes, Codeman, are just a few of the names from the past that will live in infamy. The problem was the fishing was so good that when you got your limit which everyone almost always did, there was nothing to do but party and that lead to problems. During that time we were in portables and drove back to Doc's cabin on Leech every night so thankfully it spared a few of the brain cells I have left. But you are right Stan. We will never experience something like that again in our lifetime.

[kelly-p]

Quote:

Thanks for the heads up on location

We leapfrog past where shaky and Doc were with a rental. It does good so we leapfrog that house with you. You do good the first day so we leapfrog Living the Dream"s house past you in the blizzard. They do good. We've covered a mile of ice pretty fast but I think we have a pattern here and I have those silly little fish figured out. I am positive that they are finally moving deeper. Then I make the rounds last night and in the shallowest house that had not been doing any good at all the people are like little kids after opening their X-Mass presents. It turns out that the deepest and shallowest houses's were on active fish. Now I'm a little confused again. Stupid fish.

[shaky legs2]

I smell a crappie highway bite.

[bturck]

Kelly you really didn't think it was going to be easy did you. Talked to patsy yesterday, headed back on feb 7th. That gives you some time and lots of time for me to put on some more line.

[Orion]

Got lucky and also got my first URL Crappie this weekend and the second and also the third. All together we caught 5 crappies and 18 eyes.

[kelly-p]

I smell a crappie highway bite.

It’s funny that you should mention this. There is something going on that I can not figure out but I do have an idea. This started about 3 weeks ago when Buddy kept getting good numbers of fish in the 2 to 3 mile area of Hillman’s road. That area should have died/burnt out but the area just kept producing. Good days and bad days but that area keeps producing. This past weekend with the cold front and all Buddy had a weekend that anyone renting houses dreams of. Talking to Dean at Beacon’s the 3 to 4 mile area of Beacon’s road has been acting about the same as Hillman’s 2 to 3 mile area. Beacon’s 3 to 4 mile area is just NW of Hillman’s 2 to 3 mile area. It makes no sense to me that these areas are not burning out.

Here is my theory. With the light snow cover the walleyes are staying more active. Feeding more and moving more then is usual for this time of year. They seem to have taken a page out of the old “crappie highway” idea from the crappies. If you look at the old GPS coordinates of the “crappie highway” this most consistent walleye bite follows almost the same route as the old “crappie highway” but 1 1/2 to 2 feet shallower. The homesteaders here a century ago didn’t have GPS’s or lakemaps or cameras or flashers but they had something else. They could tell from the walleyes caught in the gillnets which direction the walleyes were moving when they were caught. Most of them felt that the walleyes moved around the lake in a clockwise motion. Could there be a consistent “stream” of walleyes moving into these areas?

There now you guys can ponder and rack your brains about this.

Patsy already got the best cheapshot in about this. One night when I was staring at the lake map and GPS points and trying to make sense of this Patsy walked up and asked what I was working on. I explained this theory and what the “oldtimers” had said. She looked at me and replied, “You do realize that you have become one of the “oldtimers”” and walked away.

[bturck]

old timers have learned a lot though, that's a good thing

[shaky legs2]

Would the shallower water this year account for the depth differences?

[kelly-p]

Would the shallower water this year account for the depth differences?

No, the crappies have always been deeper then most of the walleyes in the winter. Usually the little dink walleyes and the crappies are deeper, bigger walleyes shallower. Way back when not many people thought that the crappies were worth catching we would work deeper and deeper over the winter until we started catching some crappies. At that point we would cuss a little put the crappie back down the hole and move back in shallower where the good fish were.

[Katoman]

We used to make 3-4 sometimes 5 trips a year. We always caught a lot of fish, you had to be there. I did catch 2 that went 18". We stayed with Hudacs most of the time until they went down, that was a sad day. We pretty much stayed with everyone, bounced aorund, spread our business as such.

Kelly, I am still curious how you got that blackeye that time, too much information? Ha!!!

[monstermoose78]

Kelly what you said about the crappies being deep is the same thing my Great Grandpa Rudy Beck said and is the same thing my Grandpa Rudy Beck have told me. If you are fishing Red Lake and are catching Crappies its time no move shallower. It is funny how people never thought much of the crappies back then and now the Crappies are worth their weight in gold. I know my grandpa sure liked the crappies I brought him from red lake. I did the crappie run about 2 times a winter, but if I would not have been in college I would have done it more.

[Stan7600]

Back around 1999 there were very few rooms available and we didn't have wheelhouses. We had to drive down to Marcel by Northstar Lake where one of the guys had a cabin, after fishing till about 10PM. This kept us out of trouble for the most part.. So we missed the "clamping" and a lot of the fun that went on. Shakey, you're right about "problems". Like kelly said, nothing good ever happened after 1 AM. Good memories of staying at Halamas' way out in the woods. Stan C.