Outdoor News

[Granny]

What are your thoughts on the Outdoor News picking small lakes as their "feature" lake? Chub is a pretty small lake and in my opinion nothing special. Yes there is some decent fishing but there are several lakes in the area that are much larger and just as good or better for fishing. I don't know how much of an increase in fishing pressure this lake will see because of it being the featured lake but why don't they stick to larger lakes? Just venting a little.

Granny

[OUTDOORNUT]

If you look at a lot of the featured lakes, they are low profile lakes. It makes sense to give the readers a little insight on not so popular lakes, these make up the majority of the lakes in MN anyway. After they go through Mille Lacs, Winnie, LOW, and .......there ya go what is left??? I think when they feature low profile lakes it may lessen fishing pressure and give the readers a reason to try a different spot. Is there going to be a million people flocking to Chub because it was featured....I dought it.

Just my 2 cents!

[Steve Foss]

Granny:

I hear what you're saying, and if it sent people in decent numbers to those lakes I'd be against it, too.

But they feature a different lake in each issue, so it's not like they're specifically doing a destination feature that tells people to get their butts down to a hot fishing lake. It's not even much more detailed than what you can find in the map books on sale all over, which give maps, DNR stocking and sampling data and info from the nearest bait shops on how to fish the lakes.

It may send a few more people to the specific lake if they live nearby or are in the general area, but I doubt it increases pressure over time. And the types of folks who might head down to the particular small lake because it's featured in O.N. probably aren't that motivated anyway. If they were, they'd have heard about the lake from other sources or they'd have bought the map book, spent the hours in the evening scouring the pages for lakes with good potential and gone there on their own. Anglers who aren't highly motivated tend not to do so well unless they get lucky, and aren't much of a threat to a small fishery.

I think a small lake with a good bite goes through booms and busts that are far more dependent on word of mouth. Lake A, about 200 acres, has a nice crappie bite. Word gets out (it always does). Turns into a crappie city for a couple months in winter. Crappies get fished way down. Lake takes five years to recover. Locals know about its recovery two years before anyone else and they cash in on the good fishing right out their door. But, yep, word gets out Lake A has rebounded and has good crappies again. Then you got another crappie village, and so it goes, and so it goes . . .

[strat-o-caster]

Granny, It's one of my favorite lakes for catch and release Bass also. At least it came out now instead of June.. Most if not all will forget by then... Strat

[andy j]

Stfcatfish, I agree with you 100% on the Lake A example. The jewel small lakes don't take to long to get fished out in this state. I grew up on a small private lake in Iowa (really nice panfish) and I know for a fact that if I could move that lake up to any area in Minnesota it would have everyone and their dog on it that first winter and it would get fished out. There was a period of time that I took that lake for granted, now I realize that anglers would drive hours to catch a few panfish the size that the lake puts out. In somes way if you look at us, we go from one lake until we deplete the lakes resource and then we move on the the next one with out a second thought, That why I am a strong believer of selective harvest.

[Animal]

I've been a subscriber to Outdoor News for a couple of years and have read with intrest each week's featured lake and I have only gone out of my way to fish one of them and that was for one day. It was the week following the featured lake story and there was only one other vehicle in the parking area. I think I saw three or four boats all day and I belive those were cabin owners. So I don't think that the featured lakes bring out too many fisherman to any specific lake.

[IrishZit]

I was surprised to hear about the walleye data. I've heard in the past it has nice walleye in it, but I've never heard of anyone putting a pattern together on walleye.

Sully