Thread: MINNESOTA... How's the bite this year?

CT, It rained here much of the night, sometimes real heavy, but we seem to be on the backside of it now, although we remain under flash flood watch from west of Minnetonka and along the Minnesota from at least LeSeur right through both core Metros. That is nothing like the flood watches from your area se into Iowa. I seem to remember that you have a stream in your backyard. Here's hoping you are high enough and that your power stays up.

I went out to a couple of docks last evening. I found crappies at both of them. At the first out over deeper water all around the T were thousands of juveniles 3-4" stacked like cord wood! Some little perch and a few sunnies were mixed in. Water was higher than I have ever seen it there, well over the WPA walls. No waders but that is what it would have taken just to reach the shoreline trees.

The second dock had the average 7-9" crappies scattered all over but not concentrated anywhere. I fished to visible fish in 3' of water on the inside weed line, over 10' on the outside weedline and down to maybe 15 or 20' at the docks deep T over 30' and caught scattered fish in all those places and in most spots in between and at depths from the surface down as far as I could get a 1/64th oz jig to go on 2# line. Yes you can get a 1/64th oz just with a tiny plastic tail down to the bottom at close to 30', if you have the patience and are out of the wind. Bite there came on a slow lifting retrieve up from the complete bottom about 1/3 to 1/2 the way back to the surface. Color of the 1" tail was white and that seemed to be the only color that worked. The jighead was black. I will fish any color jighead as long as it is the same color as Henry Ford's first cars. This year white tails have been best both for the little rattails like last night and the twister types.

I suppose I threw back maybe a couple dozen 7-9" crappies at the second dock in a matter of a couple of hours, not a fast bite, but one that could be worked pretty well.

The sunfish are nesting these days on bottom that was dry last year at this time in a lot of places, and all breaks are now deeper than they have ever been before; so it pays to move up structure a bit, if you can.

Here's a picture of the stream and river that run behind us, Dutch.



The creek is the water in the foreground. The river runs from right to left. The hand-railing you see in the middle of the picture under the trees leads down to a sand bar that's currently underwater. The young lady waving in there is Carole. Next to where she is standing the creek is normally flowing about 12 feet lower than what you see here. I took the picture from the foot bridge that spans the stream and we live on the side opposite of where Carole is standing and more behind me on the bridge..

We have quite a bit of that around here, too, in fact pretty much all across southern Minnesota. Here in the Twin Cities we got between 2 and 6 inches more rain depending on where you were just in the last 24 hours. My house is about as high as you get in South Minneapolis, it is downhill in all directions from here, but to get to work I will have to cross some pretty low spots and I may have to do some serious detouring to cover that 6 mile stretch. (and that is to start at 4am!) I laid in some food and have enough canned goods if the power goes out, but work still needs to be covered and I am about the closest in anyway.

Oh - it is raining again and that is heading south...

My on-line weather map shows Rochester almost out of the rain for the night. Maybe it will stay quiet all night.

I have to pick strawberries again in the morning so I'm hoping things will at least be dry from the top down, meaning no rain on my back. I'm enjoying a bowl of strawberry shortcake right now in fact. As far as strawberries and raspberries are concerned, this wet is good. The other stuff in the garden is liking the moisture too. My bush beans are three feet tall now so they can quit growing and put their energy into making my beans. The tomatoes are approaching three feet now too and have grown a foot since we got home Monday. And of course I am super happy that I fertilized the lawn this spring. I need a baler attachment on the Toro.

The only thing this rain has done that's negative for me is that its keeping me off the water.

Looks like you will only need to let the fog burn off.
That's certainly better than another half foot of rain!

I can see sunshine.

I just did a check on a couple water level monitoring sites and both places I'd fish have very high water right now. The lake just north of town is about 3 feet over normal with a "no wake" rule in effect. I can launch at either end of the lake but it will still take a half hour at an idle to get to where the fish are. The other area is on the Mississippi River and the backwaters I'd target have 4 to 6 feet of fast moving water over them right now and launch sites are basically under water. So here I sit with a fishing pass for the next three or 4 days and no where to go.

The whole state except for the extreme NW corner is having to deal with high water. Something isn't right here...it darned near July and we're supposed to be looking for some extra water.

We drove along the Mississippi between Lake City and Red Wing yesterday and the water was within 18" of being on the highway in a couple areas. The Frontenac beach area is really taking a hit. Red Wing's water front is pounded too. I check the monitoring site I use for the river and see that today, ever so slightly, there is a turn down in water levels so the crest had to have happened yesterday. The flow at Alma has been steady at 157,000 cubic feet of water per second. That rate has shown a very tiny decline. Locally Lake Zumbro has dropped below the no wake levels so normal operation on the lake can be done but with the river still ripping and high the Zumbro will take a serious busy hit. It'll need to settle out some anyway.

I tried some fishing in a slack area along shore in Red Wing yesterday and found some nice gills and a crappie or three. All were released since I was working....or supposed to be working. I saw others shore fishing too and they all had fish. On a bright note, this high water is creating fishing that normal water levels can't offer and the old lemons/lemonade ideology comes into play. And gas is saved when not needing an outboard. Its not all bad.