Nelson Lake (Totagatic Flow)

20 years is yesterday lol. When I fish it in the late 60s, early 70s the walleyes were everywhere in the lake .    The problem with that is that there was a 12” size limit and you could catch a couple of dozen 11 3/4”ers a day with no problem.   If you stuck with it you could get your limit of 5 fish from 12-16”.   I never caught many larger than that.    9-10+ gills were common as were 18” LMB.    I don’t remember ever catching a pike or crappie.     My kids loved catching gills below the dam too.😆

I have been fishing this lake every September since 2018.  We have never caught a smallmouth.  I talked with a guy who lives on the lake, who specifically fishes for bass. He said smallmouth are far and few between.  I also had talked to the late, great owner of "Minnow Jim's" about the smallmouth, and he said they are very rare. 

This is a very interesting lake.  Talking to the two above, they said repeatedly how the lake has changed a lot over the last 20 years.  

I’ve never caught or heard of any in there.    It doesn’t mean they’re not though.

Any tips for the smallmouth on the lake. Very cool and interesting lake

Fished Nelson this weekend with my brother -in- law.  Slow overall, but did catch some crappies, mostly small, in a deeper basin on a gold jig and plastics. Did keep enough 9-10 inch fish for a couple of meals. 

Quick fishing report.  Fished on Friday and Saturday on the Northwest section of the lake.  Fishing was horrible!  We had 5 flags and no fish.  We did jig in the late afternoon each day but got skunked.  Marked fish but nothing was happening.

I fish this lake with my father-in-law every September and do pretty well.  This was my first time ice fishing it and we never go to that side of the lake.  This was more of a relaxing trip with the family with fishing as a bonus.

Ice is a solid 13 inches or so where we were at with almost a foot of snow on top.