Fishing Report for April 14

[Tanner Wildes]

Been out sucker fishing a bit, they aren't quite running yet, but a few males are moving upstream. went out with a buddy one day and we ran out of bait, and kept 24 suckers, both redhorse, and white suckers. went out sunday with Jess and same thing, ran out of bait, but kept 20 of them. pretty fun.

Also last week I went out with the DNR to run fyke nets on the Chip, it was pretty cool to help with that. Got a few muskies, a 48 and 49 were the biggest, will post a pic up soon. Also got a bunch of walleye, but the bad thing is, only one female in 5 nets in 3 days was under 16.5 inches, not much for year classes coming up, pretty crazy, so the dnr is right about there being big problems for the chip in coming years for walleye fishing. we also got a walleye that was about 10 pounds which was cool. Water temps are in the low to mid 50's.

Good luck,
Tanner Wildes

[curleytail]

That's something about the walleyes in the Chip. It's had good walleye fishing for so long it's hard to imagine that it could suddenly drop off. I haven't paid much attention to what is going on out there, but it seems like I heard about the DNR wanting to put an 18" minimum size limit in place for "eyes on the Chip and also try to increase the largemouth bass harvest.

Are they figuring that the increase in largemouth is hurting the walleye reproduction? I'm sure the guys that fish bass a lot don't want people to start keeping them, but it would really be a shame to see the walleyes on the flowage go to heck.

Tucker J.

[Mark Benson]

Every time I hear about the 18" and over rule, it makes me wonder if Canada has an 18-21" slot and MN has an 18"-26" or bigger slot depending on the lake, why on earth would we want to allow the most important breeding fish in any system to be cropped off just as they are getting into their prime???

Mark

[muskie_man]

How and what do you use to catch suckers?

[Tanner Wildes]

I've just been using two leaf worms with a hook, and sometimes a split shot. you will see them in the rivers, and just cast upstream and let the worm float down to them.

Tanner Wildes