Well I got some good time out on the water this last week. Typical Minnesota spring was the case this last week, snow followed by sunny skies and high wind! The elements this week were not ideal by any means! However, it’s one of those things you can’t catch fish sitting on the couch. I found with this cold front that pushed through early in the week definitely effected the fish a little more than I expected.
Here is what I did find. With this cold front I feel it pushed a lot of these fish a little bit deeper than they were the prior week. On two different large bodies of water in the metro I found crappies out in as deep as 22’ and schooled up around 15’ down. These were very tough to target because they were on the move and didn’t seem to stay in an area very long. Best approach when I find crappies suspended like that is a slip bobber and jig you can pin point exactly where you want the bait to get in the water column. Now on a different lake I found the crappies to be very tight to the bottom in that 15’ range and moving a lot as well but not schooled up like prior weeks. These I found the best approach for was dragging small 1/16oz jigs to cover the area better and that seemed to out fish the slip and bobbers. Best thing to do is stay versatile and have the open mind to change techniques up on any given day. Crappie minnows seemed to be the best bait, I did have a few on plastics but the live bait seemed to out fish the plastics for myself.
Now let’s talk bluegills! I did stumble into a decent bluegill bite this week as well. Fish were same area as crappies I found however very shallow. Wind beaten shoreline seemed to be the ticker on the windy days. These fish were schooled up thick in 7’-3’ where the weeds have been starting to come up. Best approach for these were use a slip bobber and drag your jig off the weed patch and let it sit right on the edge. Best for the blue gills was about 50/50 between crawlers and plastics.
Overall it’s great to just be out on the water and the fun part of fishing is some weeks are great and some are slower. The slower ones make you appreciate the good ones even more! It’s good to see a lot of people still making it out on the water, remember to practice selective harvest best you can to keep these lakes going for years to come. Tight lines everyone and thanks for reading.
