Upper Red Lake, Beltrami County (all postings)

Hit Upper Red this past weekend with three other buddies and had mixed results....

Friday fished from noon-7:00 pm and picked up 13 walleyes and 6 perch. All fish were keepers, with walleye ranging from 14-16.5 inches. Perch were in the 9-10 inch range. Never had a bite from 7:00 pm to 7:00 am.

Saturday-Picked up 8 walleyes, 11 perch, and 1 northern. Most fish caught right in the middle of the day, as we never had a bite from 6:00 on.

Sunday-Only fished untill 11:00 due to 9 hour drive home. Picked up one walleye and two perch.

Majority of fish caught on tip-ups with a few jigging. Rattle reels produced virtually nothing, although we didn't fish with them as much with the great weather.

All in all, a fun trip with a great group of guys that included a fish fry on both Friday and Saturday night.

Anyone able to offer any news on the walleye fishing this winter? A group of four will be headed up in two weeks chasing the walleye bite. Just wondering if it is better than it was the past couple of winters when it was fairly slow.....

Not  sure if this is a sign the crappies are making a come back but three days of great action leads one to think maybe. Twelve feet of water on the SW end using a red glow has been reminding me of years past. Nice, real nice size fish.

 Not first hand knowledge, but aquaintainces have been catching walleyes already through the ice. Strictly a walking deal as of today, but a good bite. Be safe!

Yesterday I was finally able to get back out on the mighty Upper Red Lake. After a two week helping of wild winds the lake was a mess. Water temps ranged from 42-44 degrees with some slightly warmer stuff coming out of the rivers. Water clarity was nonexistent; I have seen oatmeal with more transparency. But fish where still to be had with the right presentation.

Big sound and big flash while moving slowly was the key in the churned up water. I started with cranks and small spinners with no luck, a quick change of the #3 Indiana blades on the Lindy Spinners to bigger #5 and even #6 Colorado blades proved too much for them to handle in the muddy water. With the plastic clips this change to bigger blades took about 5 seconds a spinner, one of the great features of the Lindy Spinners.

Fish where holding slightly deeper than before with the majority of active feeders in the 8-10 foot range, this of course makes sense after a big wind. As calm days continue the fish will push shallower following the fall shiner runs and become increasingly aggressive as ice season draws closer.

To get an idea of blade size I attached a picture. Yes it is black/white and messed up. I screwed something up and over exposed all the pictures to a bright white fuzzy mess. Didn’t realize it until the fish where about 350 degrees baking in a citrus marinade. But you can see how big the blades are as it is hanging right below the fishes eye.

The curse is lifted! Today brought limits back to the boat with a little twist to the old spinner trick. Utilizing the Golden Shiner Lindy crawler harness with a #4 willow leaf blade but forget the crawlers. With the sluggish walleyes short striking baits yet still wanting a minnow presentation I left the crawlers in the tub. I made the switch to the crawler harnesses hooking a frozen shiner through both the head and the tail. This trick put an end to the misses and started putting fish in the boat.

Anywhere form 4-9 feet of water all along the eastern shore produced walleyes as long as speed changes were made. Don’t hesitate to stall out the blades completely dropping below .5 mph or even crank them up to 2.3 mph; as long as the speed changes they will strike on the change.

You ever hear anything good / bad about Reds?

I've never had a bad time with Cookie. Had some poor fishing, but Cookie has always been helpful, plowing new roads to unfished areas, scouting for you.....He will even move your shack during your trip if you are on the dead sea.

He has a variety of shacks, reasonable prices.

Hey guys, need some help. Im taking an ice fishing trip up to Upper Red this winter. I need some recomendations on where to go for a good experience in a sleeper shack. I need a place that will have a shack to fit 6 guys. Ive done alot of research online, but just wanted to get some oppinions.

Thanks!

High temps, high winds, low clarity and still big results. With the weather pattern cooking the shoreline and the wind churning the water up to a silted froth the fish had the decision to move out deep made for them. Some fish are still coming in on the shallow break but they tend to be your smaller runs of fish say 10”-12” class. Some structural elements in shallow will hold bigger fish but the numbers are low.

Where I am finding bigger fish is nowhere and everywhere. Open water trolling with either down riggers or lead core has begun. The random wandering across the deeper holes of the lake is producing fish and nice sized fish at that. It is not the fast and furious bite we see in May/June but you will go in with a limit as long as a few key points are followed. One is making sure to stay deeper then 13 feet of water, for some reason this is the breaking point for bigger fish, my guess is temp and oxygen levels are optimum at that range. Second is lots of speed changes between 1.9-3.4 mph and working the rod, don’t hesitate to drop the rod tip back and snap it forward every so often as the speed change has been element in triggering fish. Last and most important is color or lure selection. With the ever changing water color and clarity of Red Lake stick to few guidelines to bring those fish to the boat.

Sound is key, even when red lake is clear it is still stained so sound is key to drawing fish within eyesight of your lure. The rattles of a Lindy Shadling or River Rocker put out big sound when they are aggressive and the gentle thumping of a spinner is just enough to take a fish from neutral to curious.

Next look at clarity and determine if it is cloudy or clear. If the water has a deep maroon color you lucked out and Red Lake has settled. This is when your bright colors excel. Color patterns with pinks, chartreuse, and hard defined patterns such as a Chartreuse Perch or Pink Shiner work well. Now if the water has that buckskin brown frothed look it’s a visual nightmare as in the Marcum clip below. This is when it’s time to shine and Lindy Shadings have the right flash to go with the dash in some intense color patterns. Look at Golden Shiner, Yellow perch, Tulibee, Shiner and Golden Shiner. Also a dark outline or profile will produce, such as the Black Shad, Fathead or even Bluegill color.

http://youtu.be/sUj_dl9ygPA

The last few trips on the water I have seen minimal boats so you will have the lake to yourself, take advantage of the open spaces and find some lost fish.

I have been reading through some of the old report posts and it looks like some updating is needed. That said I will address a few things.

The current regulations allow us to keep four walleye with a protected slot 20-26” that must be released immediately. Now four walleye on Upper Red lake is not going to take you very long as Upper Red is numbers lake pushing out buckets of 16-20” fish with a few 24” plus fish mixed in.

Are the Crappies dead and gone, no they have returned back to a normal level as in the days previous the famed crappie boom. We still pick up a few in the winter and the spring runs are still a great way to catch a bunch of 14-5” crappies. Red lake never was a crappie lake and most likely will never see a boom as it did again. About fifteen factors in nature had to combine to create what is now known as “the perfect spawn” that created the crappie numbers. These factors include closing the lake to fishing for ten years again and wiping out the walleye population to make room and forage for the young crappies. I doubt it is a plan many would go for. Then we need three weeks of continuous dead flat calm during the spawn, Massive Upper Red Lake calm for that long was a once in a lifetime deal. The crappie heyday is dead and gone.

Upper Red Lake is known as one of the premier trophy pike waters in the nation. We have a steady supply of 40” plus pike swimming around. Now with new lake management for trophy class water status the slot limit has been bumped up to a protected slot of 26”-44” pike.

Now for a current report.

Wind churned waters have pushed the active fish out deeper to 10+ feet of water. Slow moving spinners with longer snells like the gold and shiner color Lindy Spinner rigs have been producing well as has a solid Lindy rig set-up with a slightly longer leader. Both set-ups have been showing the best results when fitted with a minnow. For those fitted lead core or downriggers the ability to slow roll a crank bait down deeper has also been producing strikes.

The pike action has been slow due to unstable weather patterns; give the lake a few days of calm and the pike will go nuts once again.

Currently I am sitting at home watching the tree tops whip back and forth in the strong west winds. Now normally I would say Red lake will be done for three days after the wind quits. That was normally, this year normal is far from common. With the lake levels being so very high the wind just does not have the same effect on the fishing. Our instant bite after a wind I feel is due to deeper water and here is my thoughts on why the fishing will be good after yet another strong wind.

As seen in the picture ( I can't get to load) water is churned up twice the wave height below each wave. Now with normal water levels a four foot wave shredded the bottom in 8 feet or less of water and that was a huge percentage of lake. Now with the high water the currents of a four foot wave come in contact with a significantly smaller percentage of the lake bottom AND mid lake structure goes completely untouched by direct wave currents. Thus the saturation of sediment in the water is much less this year then years previous and that is why our solid bite continues immediately after a winds as in years past the wind would shut it down. Granted there is more to it than just dirt in the water but it gets into slosh currents, temperature draws and bunch of goofy boring stuff.

Now not only do we have deeper water we also have good timing by the fish as they have for the most part started to pull off the wind churned shallows and are now hanging out around mid lake structures and even roaming the big expanses of nothing following schools of shiners just like the nomads followed the caribou. All of these mid lake fish are hungry and still feeding as there deeper water haunts are still clean and clear prime for the hunt.

That said I would say Upper Red Lake will be safe bet for some quality fishing yet again this weekend wind or not.

heading up to red lake for 4 day has anyone fished it recently its a long drive not to catch anything

i guess this lake is to far to go for 2 walleye between 15 -17? no more crappie action i wouldnt go up there either.

does anybody fish this lake in the summer? no reports for 3 months