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

Wow. A lot of nice crappies up here. Even the Minnesota Bound Crappie Tournament two weekends ago had nice weather (long over due).

Used the walleye opener as a crappie fest this weekend, boating well over 200 fish, keeping a handful of 11" fish for a meal and letting the rest swim. The biggest of the bunch was 1.9lbs.

Dirty water and high water down here in the corner are making it challenging. I fished on Monday at a local lake with limited success. Most of the negative came from a series of storms that went directly over the lake I fished tossing lightning around and, of course, thunder, all night. A week ago I had a super great day with crappies, but that was when the water was relatively clean, warming, and the temps were moving the water temp uphill. The surface temp dropped since last week by 7 degrees. The water temp down at 8 feet was about the same but the fish evidently didn't like the fireworks and were tight lipped. Such is the game of fishing.

Late ice out and cold wet weather have raised some local lake levels almost 3 feet since the beginning of spring thaw. Good catches by those willing to work for them including reports of crappies over 15" from inside the metro. Bonus gamefish have also been showing up from well before season openers, including pike, muskies, largemouth bass and some incidental carp. Biggest pike I have seen taken on crappie tackle was just at 30", biggest muskie hookups definitely pushed 40 but I have not seen one of them landed. Biggest largemouth went 23". I put the tape on that one myself although I didn't catch it, and saw the 2.25 shad bait that it took.

The crappies are taking the sun whenever it is out and have returned to many of their traditional spots that had been too shallow earlier.

The crappie bite is on and so is just about everything else at this point. Season is also now open for pike and walleyes.

Any word on how the bite is around the Aitkin area.
Thanks

I used to spend time up there on Farm Island with my cousins, but the one that was the crappie angler of the bunch stays pretty busy now.

The panfish are heating up now. We still see some shots of cool air that like to slow things for a day or two but for the most part the pannies are agreeable.

Its been stated before that the winter here was a real ugly one. The spring has been almost as bad. A nice day or two here, and there but cold fronts, nasty wind, wet and late snows really changed the fishing complexion early on. Little by little things are settling into more conducive conditions for fishing and the panfish are responding.

Let's be honest here, the sunnies and the crappies and even the perch never really stopped biting and they don't all year around, but we are finally deep into the spring patterns with spawning due to start soon in the shallowest, warmest southern waters and all across the state in the next couple to few weeks, if the temperatures stay up.

Once spawning starts I shift over to carp for a couple of weeks and let the panfish do their thing; there are far too many harvesters who would follow us around, many of whom couldn't find the beds on their own if they fell into them.

it had been on and off last few outgoing, lake i fish at was pre spawning and found them hanging in deep break line action was fast but have to follow them as they kept on moving along break line, once water temp hit the likely spawning, couldn't find them up bed so went to different lake, did pretty ok ok with size. i am more of summer crappie fisherman than spring. actually more look forward to summer bites!!!! and now i am focus on big bull bluegills. did pretty good on them on few lakes now.