Shorefishing tonight????

[wastewaterguru]

Anyone want to join me for some shorefishing tonight. I am in Paynesville and willing to drive up to 25 or 30 minutes.....

I don't know the lakes in the area well. I fished Koronis bridge last night and caught nothing but smaller sunnies and a LOT of small rock bass.

Just looking for something different. Any suggestions??? Anyone want to join me??

[NELS-BELLS]

You might give the culvert on the west side of Koronis a try. They usually get some sunnies and crappies over there this time of year and most people fish from shore there on both sides of the road.
Let us know how you do.

Nels

[Guest]

Wish I would have caught your post earlier-
are you from Paynesville, or visiting? The previous post was right on about the culvert on the west end. There's a lot of sunfish activity there when the water temps start to come up, but the fishing pressure from shore in that spot has been pretty intense the last few weeks. I've caught quite a few dandys there myself this year, but haven't had a lot of luck in the last week or so. Good luck!

[wastewaterguru]

I have been at the 55 bridge several times this spring and have done well, but not lately. Also tried the culvert last week and only caught a few....so I wanted something different last night.

First tried the Cedar Island area off 71. Caught some nice crappies off of the boat dock as well as the east shore along the road.

It got really slow about 7:30 or so and I packed up and decided to take the back roads back to Paynesville. Ended up on Eden Lake road I think....I don't know for sure but there was a culvert there between a canal and a lake and the crappies were so thick in the canal that I thought the bass were surface feeding. I fished there until I couldn't see my hand in front of my face anymore. I caught 20 or so nice crappies on a bare hook and a waxie. I also caught several very big bullheads. The crappies were hitting anything that moved. A family of hispanics were throwing crawlers and catching them. Another guy was using minnows and I was using waxies. I had my ice buster bobber swallowed a dozen times or more and almost landed one that had eaten my bobber. I have never seen so many aggressive crappies in one spot. They were all pretty small that I caught, but man was that fun.

I am not sure of the name of the road I was on, but it turned into 34 as I went west back to Paynesville.

[wastewaterguru]

As always when traveling for work, they were all released. Hotels don't make good fish cleaning stations.

[jlm]

Very cool. I know where you are talking about, I was down there last year. Please be sure to practice C&R, crappies are particularly vulnerable at this time of year! Good luck!

[wastewaterguru]

Gonna be in the area again tonight. Anyone interested??

I get in less trouble spending the evening fishing than at the local pub....

[jlm]

I can't make it tonight but if you are in town in the future, let me know. What do you do anyway?

[wastewaterguru]

I am an environmental engineer for the dairy industry.

I'll be in the area today, tomorrow and again next week. I need to get back to the cities after work tomorrow so today is the only day I can fish this week.

[jlm]

WW-
Well, how did you do? I have heard of a couple spots that are heating up (shore fishing) if you are interested. Let me know and I will email you!

[wastewaterguru]

Did good if a guy just wants to catch and release about a hundred crappies an hour. I'll bet I didn't see a single fish over 8.5 inches. There were two seperate spanish speaking families that kept everything they caught. I think they were pissed that I was outfishing them and releasing everything to boot.

This was at the spot East of the 34 and 22 intersection and just North of Eden Valley as mentioned above.

I also stopped at one of the culverts on Koronis and chucked a pink tube jig under a bobber and caught two 3 pound or so northerns back to back and decided to call it a day.....

On the way back to Paynesville, I stopped at the Koronis outlet (I think) Bridge (Not the 55 bridge). There were some young guys in there early twenties at best fishing and I just wanted to see what they were catching. I walked up to one of them and realized he had nothing on his line but a sinker and a treble hook and asked him what he was "snagging". He said he was snagging carp and that he was told by the DNR that this was legal. Well I may have confronted him with the legality of the issue if he wasn't fishing with three other guys......plus I am not a big fan of carp anyway. I stood there about a minute and one of the guys caught..."I mean snagged"...about a 5 pound northern and I watched as he returned the bleeding fish to the river. Ok maybe an accident. Then another guy caught a small northern and then another. At this point, I got in my car and headed down the road while turning over license plate numbers to the local dispatcher through the 911 service.

I'm pretty sure these boys weren't the FM type. But if they do see this post.......I hope they got busted.....

[jlm]

Good work WW! I would recommend turning in the others you saw keeping all the crappies as well. Can you imagine the impact that is going to have on the population. Keeping 100 crappies a day for two weeks straight can't be good and that is probably just one family. This crap is going on all over the place and for me, I am not going to take it anymore. I will confront and turn people in regardless (I can run real fast when I am scared so I am not worried about them getting there hands on me). I hope everyone else does the same. So, WW, great work and keep on doing "the right thing".