The Outdoors

By Scott Rall, Outdoors Columnist

I have always been of the opinion that fishing is pretty good even when you don’t catch any. I will follow that up with fishing is even better when you do catch a few. I just finished up a trip to Upper Red Lake Minnesota and it really changes your attitude about fishing around here.

We had more than a few lakes that experienced severe winter kill this last winter. Some of these bodies of water will take several years to rebound back to their pre-winter kill conditions. Fish grow really fast in the shallow lakes with dirty water. This helps reduce the down time for these lakes after a winterkill.

I used to fish 4-5 days a week back in the old days. Now my fishing is squeezed in between life with six dogs. Four of them are mine and the other two little ones are my gal’s. A trip to Red Lake once a year around the end of May has happened for me for about 15 years in a row.

The results over those 15 years can only be described as awesome. The program has changed over that time with the current program including me and a friend fishing from my boat and four other participants fishing from a rented pontoon. Pontoons have never been considered a very high-tech way of chasing walleyes but on Red it makes very little difference.

We only fish on weekdays and never on the weekends as the boat traffic is just too strong on the weekends. That is not to say traffic is light during the week, it is just lighter. At no time in the three days that I was there was there a time I could not count at least 85 other boats in my vicinity.

We take a hand-held clicker and count the number of fish caught each day. Between the two boats we all throw in $10 each and who ever catches the 100th fish gets the payday. This happened by 1:00 p.m. each of those three days. Limits were raised and the slot opened up a little this year so each angler could keep five fish per day with one of those over 17 inches. We have one member of our group that had never fished until last year and with his limited experience still caught the biggest walleye two of the three days we fished.

The bite here is just incredible and is really steady for at least the first 6-8 weeks after the opener. What a place to take an adventure regardless of if you’re a novice or a pro. After I had caught my fill of walleyes, we trailered to one of 100 other lakes located within 60 miles and caught our limit of huge bluegills and sunfish. What a nice chance of pace when where I come from you need to catch about 50 little ones for each one that makes it into the live well.

Upper Red is also well known for having lots of really nice pike. On day three we decided to troll some big musky baits to see if we could smoke a big pike to add to the memory list. I tried about everything in my musky box and our result was one fish. It was the biggest walleye I had ever seen come out of Upper Red Lake and was a 15 ¾ in beauty.

This was the biggest walleye my fishing partner had ever caught. We photo’d the fish and released it wondering, with all of the fishing pressure this lake gets, how a fish could grow to that size without having made it into a frying pan along the way.

The only drawback to this world-class lake is its distance from my home.  It is a 7.5 hour drive no matter how hard you try to make it shorter. There are no interstate highways to reduce windshield time.

You can stay on the water at West Winds Resort or stay at any number of hotels within 45 miles. In all of the years I have made this trek there was only one year the weather was so bad we could not get on the water. Last year, in 2022, the wind blew 30 mph for all three days and we fished other smaller lakes with the pontoon guys fishing from shore. It is not too late to make this drive and, regardless of your favorite fish, this lake can satisfy your fishing itch with little trouble. We booked again for next year and if make the leap, I just might see you there at the end of May 2024.

  

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If you have any questions, reach out to me at scottarall@gmail.com.