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2022 MN Season Thread


gimruis

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Thought for sure @FryDog62 would beat me to it but it appears he’s soaking up some rays in Florida.

 

Post your success and failures here for the 2022 season!

 

Inland water bass opener is on Sat, May 14. Only 4 months and 5 days away…

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  • 4 weeks later...
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Yep, I'm a bit slow on the draw... Here's best so far in 2022. 21 inch post-spawner... not in Minn, but at least I had my Twins hat on lol. Someone should get one through the ice soon maybe... 

1ECC7547-0B7A-446E-A1F7-BF8C52AC10FF.jpeg

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4 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

I watched a guy on YouTube pull a big walleye through the ice on minnetonka yesterday…..

Ya - pretty regular occurrence actually. Pike and walleye are two big targets through the ice here...besides the panfish which are huge targets. There are occasional bass pulled up, but they're not targeted near as much.

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1 hour ago, MN Fisher said:

Ya - pretty regular occurrence actually.

Regular occurrence?  I wouldn't say that.  There's how many people fishing out there and the number of people pulling big walleyes through the ice regularly is slim at BEST.  Even more common walleye lakes like Mille Lacs, Upper Red, and LOTW have a tough bite right now because its the middle of winter.

 

Not to say that it doesn't ever happen, but its not common.  It occurs a lot more often during the open water season, especially in the spring or fall.

 

What I find to be really odd is that I've fished Lake Minnetonka for 25+ years for bass, crappies, and muskies and at no point during that time period have I caught a walleye.  You'd think at some point I would have caught one by accident.

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13 minutes ago, gimruis said:

Regular occurrence?  I wouldn't say that.  There's how many people fishing out there and the number of people pulling big walleyes through the ice regularly is slim at BEST.  Even more common walleye lakes like Mille Lacs, Upper Red, and LOTW have a tough bite right now because its the middle of winter.

 

Not to say that it doesn't ever happen, but its not common.  It occurs a lot more often during the open water season, especially in the spring or fall.

 

What I find to be really odd is that I've fished Lake Minnetonka for 25+ years for bass, crappies, and muskies and at no point during that time period have I caught a walleye.  You'd think at some point I would have caught one by accident.

Well, all I know is that one neighbor told me his freezer has been restocked with a limit of 18"-20" walleye - all taken on Minnetonka in the last month.

 

Maybe it depends on which bays you're fishing...I dunno. I know that when I had the runabout, I'd catch them in Cooks and Halstead Bays much more often than in Harrisons, Smiths and even Spring Park...maybe they like the SW parts more than others.

 

All I know is what I hear from the guys who live in my neighborhood and go out...they all get decent walleye out of 'Tonka year round.

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1 minute ago, MN Fisher said:

they all get decent walleye out of 'Tonka year round.

I don't really buy that.  But since we're all fishermen, we tend to exaggerate about our catches already.

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27 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

They also got some monster Pike

I just figured out why I have never caught a walleye out there.  Its a night bite.  The water is so clear and there's so much day time traffic, it makes perfect sense now.  I've muskie fished out there at night, but never pulled an all-nighter.

 

I've caught sizable pike out there like that.  Kinda weird that they catch em at night though.  Every one of those fish came in like they were stone dead lol.  Absolutely no fight to them in cold winter water.

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3 minutes ago, gimruis said:

I just figured out why I have never caught a walleye out there.  Its a night bite.  The water is so clear and there's so much day time traffic, it makes perfect sense now.

Ya - the few times I caught walleye were late evenings or early mornings...between dusk and dawn/sunset.  I'd occasionally take a tent/sleeping bag with me in the runabout on weekends and camp the night on Wauwatosa (Boy Scout) Island...so I'd be fishing later/earlier than my normal fishing days.

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  • 1 month later...
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It's time to revive this thread.  Let's make some local predictions for ice out here now.

 

Minnetonka - average ice out is April 13 which is 26 days away.

 

I'm sure there is still 20+ inches of ice out there, but the snow is rapidly disappearing.

 

I'm gonna go with April 17, one month from today.  Hope to be crappie fishing out there in just over a month!

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I'm sticking with the prediction I made on A-Jays Annual Ice Out

 

April 27

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the red river is allready open at the dam here on the minn-ndak border and you can fish year round with no restrictions on the dakota side. Also the sheyene river runs through the west side of fargo.

I never fished the sheyene but since the great flood of 1997 here in fargo the city built a flood controll area with big culverts on the sheyene so i am gonna try the flood controll area out in a couple weeks.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just wondering if anyone here has been up to island lake reservoir? Just looking for a general feel of the lake. Been there a few times now caught a few decent smallies and a couple small muskie but strange lake for sure.

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In case anyone is interested in ice out dates, the DNR keeps a decent tab on when lakes lose their ice.  They also show the average ice out date.  It relies primarily on volunteers and its not always updated every day though, but its better than nothing.  Lake Pepin is always the first one since its technically just a wide, slow-moving section of the river.

 

https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/ice_out/index.html

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We live on a very small lake south of the metro and our ice out was today. Hopefully the larger lakes will follow soon. Can't wait to get the boat out!

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1 hour ago, Adrift said:

All of the south metro lakes that I've checked in the last two days are open. 

 

Ha, in Grand Forks we got 8" of snow between 1-6pm.  Now it's blowing.  Saw a couple side streets with 6' drifts

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2 hours ago, Deephaven said:

Ha, in Grand Forks we got 8" of snow between 1-6pm.  Now it's blowing.  Saw a couple side streets with 6' drifts

all we got in fargo up till now 12:45 am wednesday is light rain.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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I went fishing on Saturday afternoon for the first time this season.  Panfish (primarily crappies) were the target.  I went with my parents to a small local lake near their house after turkey hunting in the AM.

 

Between the 3 of us, we caught over 100 crappies.  A few sunfish and small perch mixed in.  We found a calm, shallow backwater area and it was just nonstop action.  Every crappie was a dink.  Only 3 were over 8 inches.  Its a lake known for numbers, not size, so I was kind of expecting this.  Started with minnows, and switched to small plastics after half an hour.  Water temp was 46 on the main lake and 51 in the backwater.

 

My next trip will be for more quality instead of quantity.

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