First Timer URL

[cheesehed]

Have been reading about the lake on this site for 5 months. Had to check it out for myself. Fished from noon to 6 on Thurs north of the Tamarac. 15 walleyes, 15 drum, 4 crappies, 1 northern, 2 fighter jets. Thanks for the warning on the jets by the way. Got up at 5am Fri. Motor wouldn't start. Decided to float the river from Hillman's to the lake. 35 walleyes, 2 fighter jets. Several walleyes between 22-23 inches. What a hoot! My right shoulder is still a little sore from reeling them in. A few passing boats made the comment about how it's too bad you can't keep any bigger ones. My general comment was if you could keep them most of them wouldn't be here. What a joy to fish a lake I have never fished before with fairly heavy fishing pressure and catch 70 decent-sized fish from basically noon on Thurs. to noon on Fri. I kept 4 crappies and 1 walleye for a fish fry. That's all the fish I really needed. The only other place I could have done this would have been north of the border where it would have cost me a lot more time and a LOT more money.

I did get checked by a warden on Fri. morning. Took the forum advice and threw back all the 16 7/8's. Probably saved me some coin. I was fishing with a single pole with 2 others rigged with different stuff and ready to use. He reminded me that in Minnesota I could only fish with one line at a time. I assured him that today I was. He said "yup, but last night you were using 2". Which I was. I'm from Wisconsin. It's 2 lines here, 2 on the Mississippi, and 2 on this site for ice fishing so I just figured it was 2 for open water. I was going to ask him why he didn't ring me up the night before, but thought better of it. That's right boys, he did a catch and release on me and I'm very thankful.

Overall, I don't think most people appreciate the resource available here. From the outside looking in, if I were a local here I would lean on the overprotective side. Just looking at past resources and mankind in general, these just may be the good old days.

URL is a very unique and wonderful place. I'm sure I'll be back someday.

[slimy]

Great post there Cheesy:), yea the Red pond is unique in that you have trophy northern and crappie and for a numbers lake the walleye fishing is hard to beat. The way it's panning out we will be able to keep 4 of them there walleyed pike come early july. Well, glad you had a good time around here and hope to see ya soon.

[grpd]

My wife and I are going to be on island lake just south of northome from june 9 thru june 18 and was wondering if we landed one day at the bridge went towards hillman's which i am not sure how far that is would we be able to catch some walleye and crappie drifting down to red or is that to late and the fish will have moved out of there, thanks for any info, again, i am guessing the river flows into red so drifting to the lake would be the best

[cheesehed]

Right now if you took a minnow under a bobber between the first bridge from the lake to the lake itself - esp. early morning and toward dark- you would catch all the walleyes you want. My guess is that they would be there another 10 days at least, but I'm sure the locals could tell you better than I could.

Good luck. Beware of fighter jets.