Thread: Faribault area crappie?

Just to the west of Faribault you'll find plenty of decent fishing on Madison or Washington Lakes. There are other lakes more in the immediate area but those will skunk over pretty bad in the heat of summer and generally see a ton of recreational boating and jetheads. The local lakes see some winter action thru the ice but nothing eye-opening. The two lakes mentioned are much larger and stay clean all year.

You'll find Cannon Lake to the north and east, just west of Cannon Falls. To the south on I35 [which runs right thru Faribault] you'll find Albert Lea and Lea Lake. Lea has crappies, walleyes, pike and bass.

Take Hiway 60 straight east from Faribault to Wabasha and you'll find yourself at the foot of Lake Pepin in pool 4 of the Mississippi River. This impoundment is over 26 miles in length and is a couple miles wide at its widest. The pool runs from 6 miles north of Red Wing, Minnesota to Alma, Wisconsin. I don't think any body of water in Minnesota can compare to the pool 4 fishing. Walleye, sauger, northern, crappie, panfish, catfish, sturgeon, some paddlefish, white bass, large and small mouth bass, muskies are a maybe and even some trout can be taken there. The fishing is year round with no closed seasons because it is a border water. While the lake itself will freeze in the winter and offers some ice fishing, the river portion ahead of the lake, about 9 miles of river, will stay open thru even the coldest of times and fishing for the walleye and sauger is unreal then.

This is a nice area and besides fishing we have some unreal whitetail hunting as well. You'll enjoy the move.

A word of caution since you are from south of the winter kill zone. A lot of our smaller waters kill out of decent size fish during ice cover either regularly or occasionally. In places like sloughs down south where you would expect to find decent sunfish and perhaps crappies, up here many of them are empty except for a few dinks, green sunfish and bullheads and other such small types as are more resistant to winterkill. The state DNR website has lists of where they have found winterkill, and local baitshops will also be able to warn you off from winterkill waters. Those that don't generally have some crappies in them, up here they are normally blacks, but whites are around, too, if less common. There are degrees of winterkill, too, sometimes crappies survive it where larger game fish and even carp do not. This winter watch where the ice fishermen go, and keep an eye on the ice fishing forums. If there are crappies there in the winter, they will still be there, if not in exactly the same places or depths in the summer.

Additional waters in reach from Faribault for a day's outing would include Minnetonka up here in the Twin Cities, but that can almost be shore to shore in pleasure boats and personal water craft in any kind of nice weather, some of which never learned anything but full throttle. Weekends on Minnetonka and you may be taking your life in your hands, unless you fish the shorelines. That is an excellent multi-species lake, though, with a full size range of northern crappies in it. Personally I never fish Minnetonka, pretty much staying on inner city lakes many of which have very good crappie populations for numbers but not so much for size.

Prior Lake is pretty well known for crappies too, but the times I have been down there, the size wasn't worth the trip IMO.

The DNR puts out floating fishing docks on a lot of waters around the state, and they can be worth digging out. On some waters they are left in place year around, but others like the Minneapolis City Park lakes they get taken out and anchored in deeper water about this time of the year to reduce damage from ice packs during spring thaw. Where they are left out in good crappie waters they can be good right up until ice up. Look for those docks that extend past a healthy weedline out over a good break. Those floating docks have solid walkways and heavy duty rails. Pretty safe even for families, and provide excellent overhead structure to augment weedbeds and deeper breaklines.

CTom,
Thanks for the very informative post. I have family just north of the cities. I am looking forward to moving up here.

Like no1son has mentioned, winterkill can occur on some lakes but we have to see some conditions that will promote it. A prolonged winter period with excessive snow cover on thicker than normal ice can create headaches with winterkill but it doesn't occur every year and mostly it will affect smaller, shallower waters. I do believe I know who no1son is and he has some good input for the Twin Cities area and is an excellent panfisherman.

Antioch, when you get here and settled, throw me a pm or email me and we'll do some time on the Mississippi River. Closer for both of us is Lake Zumbro, east of Faribault about 35 miles and north of me about 12. This lake has some brutish crappies in it and some of the sunfish push the 11 inch mark.

The Mississippi has some ugly large crappies in it. A week ago I brough home 8 of the crappies with the smallest of the 8 taping in at 12.5". The 3 largest ones all measured over 13.75 inches. Once a guy learns to fish that river a whole new world opens up for him.