Fishing Pro Jeff Sundin Mn Fishing Report Lake Winnie, Leech Lake, Cass Lake and Minnesota North Lakes Region.

3/3/2010 The warm weather continues to tempt anglers with a case of early onset spring fever. Like a lot of other fishermen, I've been taking some afternoons off and hitting the lakes too. The driving conditions are improving daily now that the warm weather is melting down some of the drifted snow. The high temps today are predicted to be into the low 40 degree range, so I think we might be on the way to a serious meltdown before this weekend. That usually means that we get a re-freeze later in March that offers everyone a week or two to go anywhere they want.
Now that the Walleye and Pike season is closed, the main focus on the big lakes has switched over to Perch fishing. According to most of the anglers I've talked to, the action out on Lake Winnie has been good, but the average size of the fish has been on the smaller side. Our better size Perch have been coming from Cutfoot, but there the average numbers have been low. I guess that means you can take your pick, lots of action and small size or not much action with good size.
We've spent our last couple of trips chasing Bluegills and Crappie and in spite of the heavy pressure, the fishing has been fair. We haven't been tearing them up, but we've had a fish fry after every trip. Yesterday we fished from 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM and caught a half dozen Crappies and another half dozen Sunfish. We tend to get a lot of "lookers" on the flasher with about one out of five actually finally hitting the bait.
I've tried a handful of baits and there aren't any big secrets emerging about what to fish with. For the panfish, when push comes to shove, I switch back to the old reliable small Demon tipped with a couple of Eurolarvae and this always seems to call in enough to make me happy. For the Perch, it's been really tough for me to beat the small Buckshot Rattle Spoons and the small size Jigging Rapalas.
Today, I am going to try and pick up a few Tulibees to put in the smoker. I was struggling with my old smoking recipe, tried a new one and came really close to getting them perfect. One more batch should help me decide if I have it dialed in and if I do, I'll share the recipe.

OR

2/21/10 Great weather and fair on-ice driving conditions have helped boost traffic on the lakes over the past week. Almost everyone I talk to has a couple of reliable fishing spots up their sleeves and the variety of fish being caught has been really impressive. We've been sticking with the shallow weedline pattern to catch a mixed bag of Perch and Walleye, others are sticking with the deep water Crappie and Bluegill action and there are still some Walleye and Pike anglers working the main lake bars and humps.
Getting around on the ice is a little more tricky since the wind storm that blew in on Feb. 13. That wind created enough drifting to cause problems along the shorelines and around points or islands. If you have a larger 4X4 truck, you can go to 90 percent of your favorite areas, but don't venture on to the ice without a way to dig or tow yourself out.
For our Perch and Walleye fishing, we've been finding the weedline in 6 to 10 feet of water near deeper holes. We're using the small Buckshot Spoons, swimmin' jigs and small Jigging Rapalas. There has been a lot of banter between my fishing buddies and me, but I've been fishing these baits plain without any minnow or minnow parts added and I've been convinced that it's helped me target larger fish. My buddies are using minnows and have been equally convinced that this is the better approach. A good compromise would be to fish two holes, one with a jigging rod and the other with a live minnow, maybe even below a bobber.
The panfish anglers are using small size Rat Finkees, Gow Bugs or Demons and most of them have been using Eurolarvae or Wax Worms. Most of the Bluegill and Crappie action has remained in the 20 to 30 foot range but I've talked to a few anglers who are finding some fish moving in a bit shallower. It's a good idea to look in the 12 to 16 foot range.

2/8/10 We headed out to the lake Sunday after hearing about a good Crappie and Bluegill run that was going. When we got there, driving conditions were still fairly good, I saw a dozen or so trucks out there and they all seemed to be going wherever they wanted without much trouble. The snow started coming down around 10:00 AM and it's been coming down lightly for the past 24 hours. It wouldn't surprise me if we see the driving get a little tricky after this snow finally stops. But we'll know more about that when it's finished.
On Sunday, everyone in the crowd was on the same pattern, targeting the deep water holes for Crappie and Sunfish. When I checked in with a couple of fishing buddies, they reported steady but slow action. I decided to go in and have a look at the shallow weedline for signs of an early movement into the shallows and drilled my first few holes in the heavy weed cover at about 6 feet and worked deeper until I drilled a couple where no weeds came out of the holes. The depth at the clear weed edge was about 7 feet and I saw some activity on my flasher so I dropped a small Rat Finkee tipped with a couple of Euro Larvae down the hole.
The first fish I caught was a chunky Largemouth Bass so I was hoping that I'd find some Bluegills in the same area. The bad news, no Sunfish showed up. The good news, there was a great run of Perch moving in the shallow water. It started slow but built into a couple hour stretch of almost non-stop action. Size of the perch was mixed and included everything from small six inchers all the way up to some real jumbos in the eleven to twelve inch range.
I'm sure that there would have been a lot of effective baits but using the small Rat Finkee allowed me to fish without using any live bait. I started with green and caught some fish, but when I switched to a glow & orange combination, the action doubled. When the action slowed down on that bait a switched to a small bucksot rattle bait and manage to trigger another action spurt.
We didn't stick around long enough to check for any evening Walleye or Pike action, but with the Perch starting to move on the shallow weedline, it won't be long before we see more variety in these same areas.

2/3/2010 After a couple of weeks without a truck, I was anxious to get out of the house this weekend. Even though the temperatures this weekend were brisk, the sun was out and wind was calm so I picked up my fishing buddy and headed up to one of Deer River's good combination Walleye and Perch lakes. When we got there, some friends told us that they had been catching some Walleye in the 12 to 16 foot range, especially in the late afternoon. It was still early so we decided first to try shallow water for Perch.
Moving around on the lake was easy. There are a few drifts from our last snowstorm, but they weren't deep enough to thwart our efforts yet. We stopped on one main lake hump to check it out and found only tiny Perch, so we packed up and headed even shallower. When we got into 6 to 7 feet of water, we found a good school of Perch and for a while the action was fast. Once we got the Otter set up and got comfortable, we decided to stay in that area and wait for the evening run of Walleye. Today, that didn't happen so I guess it's probably a little early to be fishing that shallow, but I think they'll be in there pretty soon.
Our best baits were darker green, small buckshot spoons and I had a really good run using a 1/16th-ounce, dark green jig head with a small plastic grub tail.
Since the truck was laid up for a while, I spent some time doing my homework on the subject of the US Coast Guard's Six Pack licensing rules that will be affect many of the guides and commercials operators this year. This is definitely going to impact me and many of the folks I work with so I have written an article to help get us up to spreed. It's too long to insert here, but if you're going to be affected, here's a link to US Coast Guard "Six Pack Captain License" Requirements.

1/14/2010 Wednesday was too nice a day to pass up so we drove up to Lake Winnie for some afternoon fishing. Driving conditions on Lake Winnie are excellent. We drove out of Highbanks Resort where the plowed road is about five lanes wide and in awesome condition. Once we were on the lake, we could easily go from spot to spot without any trouble. There might be 8 to 10 inches of hard packed snow and all of the vehicles we saw were riding high and dry. Traffic was moderate with several clusters of vehicles and portable ice shacks.
Our game plan was to find and fish on a spot where there hadn't been any ice fishing traffic, so we passed by a few humps that had already received some pressure. After our third or fourth try stop, we found an "un-touched" hump and drilled a few holes. It didn't take long to find fish and in one of the holes at 22 feet deep, Walleye action was good almost immediately. We found that the fishing was best in the 20-24 foot range, most fish were running on the small side but as the sun dropped toward the treeline, the was a good flurry and we were able to sort out 11 decent eating size fish. After dark, the bite stopped and we didn't hang around to see if it would pick up again later.
We used jigging spoons and jigging Rapalas tipped with either a whole minnow or a minnow head. I think the best lures were the lime green Frostees that Arne showed up with, but I caught quite a few on a generic Red/Black jiggin spoon as well.

1/10/09 I spent Friday and Saturday attending the Minnesota DNR Round Table meetings. A few of the topics affecting anglers that I'm most concerned about for the next several seasons are; cutbacks in the DNR Fisheries budget, increasing emphasis on regulations surrounding invasive species and growing concern about how to maintain water quality and fish habitat.
The story isn't all gloom and doom, but if we expect our future to include the quality of fishing we enjoy now, we're going to be forced to make some adjustments in the way we manage our lakes, fish and finances.
Early in the discussion on Saturday (1-9) was the news that the MN DNR will be facing an approximate cutback of $4.5 million dollars for 2010. You may already know that during the past few years all "general fund" revenues that the DNR once received were ratched down and now have been completely cut. Today, the fish and wildlife sections of the DNR exist entirely on the proceeds of hunting and fishing licenses along with some help from the (Dingell-Johnson) federal excise tax on hunting and fishing gear.
One way to recover some lost revenue will be to ramp up sales of the voluntary Minnesota Walleye Stamp and the DNR announced it's marketing strategy for 2010 aimed at making anglers aware of the option and to encourage more of us to buy the stamp this year. That would help Walleye anglers, but won't do much to offset other budget losses.
Naturally, the next option is to look at increasing fishing license fees. At this point, the discussion is only hypothetical, but for Minnesota residents, it's already been ten years since we've had a fee increase so I'd expect this idea to gain traction and advance fairly quickly.
An interesting twist this year was that for several presentations on Sunday, the fisheries group and the water legacy group were combined. Combining the two groups shows that the DNR plans to involve anglers for a greater focus on water quality and habitat issues in the future. The group Anglers for Habitat that formed shortly after the 2009 round table has already started picking up a head of steam and has begun building a membership of volunteers and I expect to see them emerge as a big supporter the angler and water collaboration.
Now that I'm home for a while, I'm going to get going on some fishing and try to get up to speed on what's goiong on in the area, but I'm going to have some more thoughts about the round table too and I'm sure you'll have some questions. I think i'll move this discussion over to my facebook page because we can use that like a blog, so if you want to make some comments and you're on facebook, just search for The Early Bird's Minnesota Fishing Group.

1/6/2010 We took off last week to spend the beginning of the New Year in South Dakota for the the last Pheasant hunting trip of the season. This was my first trip out to South Dakota, but my friend Chad Haatvedt has family out in Huron and they were friendly and welcoming in every way.
Even though the weather was cold and the snow deep, we managed to keep after the birds and found plenty to keep us busy. Thanks to Chad's brother Cy and his friends, the areras we were allowed to hunt gave us the kind of hunt that most of us only dream about. I can't thank these folks enough for the great memories I'll always have of this grand finale'.
Back on the subject of ice fishing, I took a drive around the Deer river area lakes on Tuesday and found ice great ice conditions and lots of new houses on the lakes since last week. On Lake Winnie, there are plowed roads, but except for some drifting along the shoreline, most of the time you will not have problems driving in the standing snow. I've heard various reports about the ice thickness but generally, there is a foot or more on most lakes and some are reporting 14 to 16 inches of ice. The cold weekend didn't help the anction, but folks are talking about catching enough fish to keep it interesting.
My first chance at getting some first hand fishing won't come until early next week as I'll be travelling to the Twin Cities this weekend for the 2010 MN DNR Rountable meetings.

12/22/09 On Monday 12-21-09 we drove up to Red Lake and rented an ice house from my buddy Chad Benson. Ice conditions are getting better every day and we had no problems driving the truck out to the house. There isn't much snow up there yet so plowed roads aren't really needed yet, but they've got the trail marked and plows are ready to go when needed. Fishing was decent, but not wide open. We spent about 8 hours fishing and caught a total of 20 Walleye and 3 small Pike. Chad was out scouting for new spots to set his houses and he caught several Walleyes and one of the few, but still nice Crappies that remain in the lake. Daytime fishing was sporadic, but there was a flurry of action between 4:00 and 5:00 PM. Although we had heard that the fish were finicky, the ones that came in seemed to be fairly agressive though and most of our action came on jigging spoons tipped with whole, small shiners. Our set lines and bobber rigs didn't produce many fish.
Over the past weekend, the action really started heating up all over the state. I heard good fishing reports from almost everywhere. We were on a road trip down to the twin cities and saw large groups of ice fishermen on lots of the lakes we passed. Mille Lacs had lots of ice houses on the ice, but we saw only ATV's moving around on the ice. There were a few lakes further south that had some light trucks parked on ice near shore, but no sign yet of folks driving out on the "metro area lakes".
Closer to home, the action on Leech Lake and Lake Winnie has been good. Perch and Northern Pike are hitting on the shallow, shoreline drop off areas and also on the weed flats. On Winnie, Walleye action has been mainly on the mid-lakes humps at evening.

12/14/09 Oaky, addiction satisfied. I thought this was going to be my year of no Bucks, but I was too dumb to quit hunting and finally bagged a nice 9-pointer on Saturday. Just in time for the serious onset of winter. I'm guessing that you already know that we have good ice on lots of Itasca area lakes already and we're making a couple of inches of new ice every night.
On Saturday I talked with my friend up on Red Lake and he told me that they had about ten inches of good ice already but when the deep freeze hit, a lot of small cracks opened up so you need to go slow when moving around. There are some people fishing already and they are getting serious about putting hoses out. Walleye were biting in about 9 feet at sunset.
Closer to home, there are dark houses showing up now on a lot of lakes and over the weekend I saw a couple of trucks parked on ice close to shore. I haven't seen anyone driving on a lake yet, but I do expect that in the next couple of days.
According the folks at Fred's Bait, traffic was heavy on Saturday and fishing reports will start to trickle in during the next few days.

12/11/09 The Deer River area and most of the territory North to the border missed out on the big snow storm that hit Southern Minnesota. The lack of snow combined with sub zero temperatures are producing lots of ice in a hurry. Newly ice covered lakes are popping up every day now and the lakes that have frozen already are gaining 2-3 inches of ice per day. I took a road trip on Thursday and found Lake Winnie from the Dam out into Tamarack Bay and from Bowen's out into the main lake to be completely ice covered. If there is any open water in the middle, I can't see it. Folks have been fishing the Third River area for almost a week already and so even though I didn't see any traffic on the main lake, I expect the picture to change a lot this weekend.
A stop over at Cutfoot Sioux also revealed McAvity Bay to be totally ice covered. Again, no traffic yet, but this too will change over the up-coming weekend. Driving through Deer River, I saw a half dozen rigs with portables and ATV's. Traffic at Fred's Bait has been spotty, but the anglers are starting to trickle in.
A friend and I were texting on Tuesday when he reported catching his first Walleye of the season while fishing on Red Lake.
If you don't have your gear together yet, now is the time to get set up. Within the next week you should be on Green For Go everywhere except the most stubborn, deep water lakes.

12/7/09 For the most part, lakes are still open or have only a thin layer of ice. But things are starting to happen fast now and the folks at Dixon Resort have put some of their rental houses out on the Third River Flowage at Lake Winnie. According to Bill Powell at Fred's Bait in Deer River, they (Dixon Lake Resort) started renting dark houses on Sunday 12-6-09.

12/3/09 It's hard to complain about the weather we've had this past month. It's been great for travelling and we've had some really nice hunting experiences. Now it's time to start watching for the first signs of ice again.
I took a tour of the Deer River area on Wednesday and most of the lakes are still wide open. There are a few small lakes between here and Grand Rapids that have ice on them now and so with temperatures in the teens, it shouldn't be more than a few days before we start seeing some darkhouses popping up. I'll be checking lakes somewhere every day and try to keep the updates coming often. There are lots of folks watching the conditions, so if you see a frozen lake, report your ice conditions so we can map the progress.

10/18/09 Well folks, The weather we've had this fall has definitely been a challenge. I knew we were going to learn some new tricks and in the end, I think it has worked out that way. ONE THING I LEARNED FOR SURE is that fish always find a place to go and sometimes it's not where we think it should be. I think one of the main problems I've had this fall was continuing to look for fish in places where I thought they should show up because they would have been there in past years. The problem is that this year, water tempertures dropped so fast that I think some of these fish just by-passed the expected locations and moved right into spots that we would normally associate with late fall and early winter locations. A lot of us just aren't out there at those times and so now we're playing "catch up".
Our fishing on Saturday seemed to support my theory about the relationship between the spawning or pre-spawnTullibees and the presence of Walleye and Pike. Another fairly large gravel and rock flat, shallow on top, with immediate access to deeper water produced the same results as I talked about in the 10/16 report. This time there were also a lot of young-of-the-year Perch minnows present so these small Perch minnows were a factor in attracting the Walleye too. The surface water temperature was 44 degrees and there was a light wind. The Walleye we've caught on this pattern have been plump and healthy. No giants, but lots of fish in the 17 to 21 inch range with a few 23-24 inchers mixed in. According to a good friend, the larger fish are apparently feeding on the shallow breaklines after dark. He's been working the night time version of this same pattern and catching lots of large fish, but mot many eaters.
If I was going to be on the lake today, here's what I'd be checking out. Shallow (3 to 8 feet) flats that have mixed sand, gravel and rock located close to deep water. The presence of bait fish is crucial, if you're not seeing baitfish and fish on the breakline adjacent to the flat, then move on to another spot. It sounds a little complicated but if you look at a map of most Northern Minnesota lakes, there are usually only a couple of deep holes. So all you really need to know is whether or not the lake you want to fish has Tullibees present. If it does, look at your map to find the deep water areas and then locate any adjacent shallow flats that have potential as a spawning area. Then you'll have to go take a look at the spots to see if the mix looks right.
I usually have to check three or four fishing spots before I find the exact mix that I'm looking for, but once I know what I'm trying to find, the job gets easier.
I'll be spending the next week in the duck blind, so I don't expect to have a lot of fishing tips, but if the weather holds, we'll try to get out a time or two before we start seeing ice on the lakes. Watch for one more fishing update toward the end of the month and then after the Deer season we'll be reporting on ice conditions as they develop.

10/16/09 In spite of frustration with the cold weather and plummeting surface water temperatures, things might just be looking up for those remaining die-hard anglers who want to Walleye fish a few more times before the lakes freeze up. On Thursday, we found surface temperatures ranging from 44 to 45 degrees and the water appeared to have "cleared up" significantly. Earlier this week, we had seen a range of surface temperatures from 40 degrees to 54 degrees. The deeper lakes are holding their temperature better than the shallow lakes, but by now the fall turnover has occurred everywhere that you would expect it should have.
For me, it took a lot of searching, seven lakes in three days, but we finally found a really good Walleye bite and I may have come up with a couple of clues that will help you find a good fishing spot on your favorite Walleye lake. After scratching my head for a few days about why the Walleye weren't showing up in their typical late fall locations, I had these questions. What if the cold water temperatures really triggered the fall Tulibee and Whitefish spawning runs? And what if lots of the Walleye were feeding at night when the Tulibees in the shallows were "easy pickings"? And how would I find those fish during the daytime?
To answer my own questions I started thinking about areas where Tulibees would move in for spawning and that were also adjacent to reliable fall Walleye spots. After trying a few smaller spots and finding mostly Northern Pike, we stopped on a large, shallow flat where mixed rock and gravel dropped off from about five feet of water into 25 feet. The breakline is fairly steep, but not sharp like a cliff. Within a few minutes we noticed a number of small fish (Tulibee) dimpling on the surface on and around the edges of the flat. About half way into our first drift we started picking up a mixed bag of Walleye and Pike. After figuring out the right depth (in this case, 12 to 14 feet) and fine-tuning our speed, we were able to stay on fish, on that same flat for the entire afternoon.
We know that the presence of baitfish is key, especially in the fall. So ask yourself where are some spots like this on my lake? Off the top of my head, I'd suggest thinking about locations that are large enough to "guarantee" at least some Tulibee and/or Whitefish spawning would occur. Maybe you already know some of these spots or maybe you can check with some of the folks who net Tulibees in your area. Either way, I really think this is worth taking a look at. If you have some questions about how to think this strategy through, email me and I'll try to help out. If you have already figured this out, email that too and I'll give you an official, Early Bird pat on the back!
All that said, once we found the fish, jig and minnow combinations were all we fished with. A 1/16-ounce Sneaky Pete was a nice jig to use because it didn't get snagged in the rocks too badly. But, if it were breezy, 1/ 8 ounce jig would have been plenty good too. I did spend about a half-hour fishing night crawlers, but did not have a sniff on that bait.
After listening to all of you duck hunters shoot for the past couple of weeks, it's almost my turn to try and catch up. I'll try to get one more fishing update posted this weekend, and then I'm heading out for a week of hunting. If the lakes don't freeze before we get back, I'll be back out on the water week after next and try to post a "season wrap up" before we all get ready for the deer opener.
Good luck to everyone who keeps on fishing next week because if you've been putting up with this weather, you deserve to have some fun!

10/13/09 Well that was a heck of a blast! Our air temperature has been in the low 20 degree range every night and we've been lucky if the mid-day temps reach 36 degrees. Combine that with high winds and snow coming down and it's easy to see why a few folks changed their minds about going fishing this past weekend. Now after a few days of cancelled fishing, I'm poking my head out like a Bear that's been denned up for the winter. Hopefully the fishing will pick up where we left off last Friday, so we can finish out the last official week of our season with a robust finale'.
Walleye fishing had been picking up steadily as the fish acclimated to the colder water temperatures. On Friday, we fished the afternoon on Leech Lake and were pleasantly surprised by the action. For us, the magic depth was about 12 to 13 feet and jig and minnow fishing worked well. We boated around 20 Walleye in the afternoon and kept 10 of them, releasing an equal number of larger fish in the protected slot and smaller fish under 13 inches. Earlier on Friday, we fished Crappies on Cutfoot until lunch time and found them in 23 to 27 feet of water. The fish were semi-cooperative and we found that we could catch a half dozen or so from each school we located. As soon as the action dropped off, we had to look for another group. I was surprised that the Crappie were still so scattered, but maybe by today I'll start seeing some larger schools. As of Friday, most of the fish were still relating fairly close to the shoreline although they had moved a bit deeper. Another change I'd expect this week is to start seeing these fish move out into the deeper holes.
After I get re-aqquainted with the water today, I'll post an update about surface temps and I'll have a better idea of what to expect for the up-coming long MEA weekend.

Be sure to listen or go to KAXE 91.7 FM Grand Rapids Radio on Thursdays at 6:20 AM. We usually try to expand on this report. If you miss the show, you can pick it up on the website. Check back for a weekly fishing update (usually on Wednesdays). Ask fishing questions if you need to and I'll try to get back to you ASAP.

Use these links to read Minnesota Fishing Artcicles and get information about my favorite MN Fishing Lakes .