The Results and Conclusions
I've just gotten back from another wonderful week at the Great Pond. The lake was beautiful and in great health. We observed numerous species of ducks with new families, osprey, bald eagles, beavers, muskrats, and even two doe deer on the shore one morning when we went through Roosevelt Canal. Sea gulls were more numerous. I didn't see any cormorants, though they are still there according to data. Loons were plentiful and doing their famous calls every night. I gladly noticed a lot more weeds. Many spots with only spotty weeds in previous years looked like massive jungles this time with canopies sometimes reaching the surface. There were less leeches on fish this year. The water was clear. I saw only a few dead fish. The people in town were once again very friendly.
The weather didn't cooperate well. It rained during 5 of the 6 1/2 days that we were there. As a result, I spent less time on the water fishing then my usual average. When I fished in the rain, I was unable to get any of my family members to fish with me, and I stayed close to the resort. The time I did fish had mostly good results. As I mentioned before, I counted only keeper fish from the resort's docks and marina or any fish caught in the boat.
Results
walleye = 8
northern = 22
rock bass = 23
crappie = 9
largemouth bass = 3
sunfish = 21
perch = 50
Conclusions for each Specie
walleye - The walleye were 5 keepers between 14 and 18 inches and 3 big slot fish. We didn't catch the large amount of tiny 10 - 13 inch walleye like we did last year. However, I am tentative to predict that it's a bad year class in that range due to the huge amount of mayfly and other hatches that all happened during the week. When I night fished under a light for walleye, I caught only a few northern this year. Millions of mayflies were landing on the water, and I could often see mostly small walleye-looking fish rolling on them like trout for a massive feast. I believe these were walleye, particularly smaller walleye. My trolling technique worked on a couple of occasions but bombed on others. Since the jig fishermen still caught fish during these times, I must conclude that my reliance on trolling cost me some fish. The other fishermen didn't come back with huge numbers. Usually it was 2 walleye 3 perch, or 3 walleye 1 perch, or 1 walleye 2 perch. However, my conversations with them revealed that they also threw back a fair amount of slot fish. I don't think they were catching tiny walleye either. I conclude that the mayfly and other hatches hurt my night fishing and prevented the tiny walleye from feeding during the day. I jig fished a bit with very little success from only a few perch. The rest of my family including my eight year old son are not yet at a level to jig fish. Jig fishing is my weakness and must be improved.
northern - This is the fishing that suffered the most because of the rain. When I had nice weather early in the week, I caught them at a good rate and most were slightly larger than most years. I also saw a few 30 + fish brought in and passed a dock fisherman that proudly held up a northern well into the upper 30's. Perhaps it was somewhere between 12 and 16 pounds. It was huge. I fished for northern a lot less though. I caught a few more while walleye fishing I suspect due to the higher weed growth on the main lake.
rock bass- I never actually targetted rock bass this week. I caught all of them while trolling, fishing for crappie, or my son got them at the resort's marina.
crappie - The crappie were less numerous but very large in size with all being between 11 and 12 inch slabs. Since I've seen the average size go up for three straight years from 9-10, 10-11, and now 11-12, I am starting to wonder if there was a strong year class about 5 or 6 years ago. My resort's marina only yielded a few and the owners told me that I had caught the first ones in there of the year. My second spot no longer had the giant beaver dam that used to block in someone's boat. I guess that person must have gone through a lot of pain to remove that dam. The third spot is too heavilly fished and yielded no crappie. My last spot had most of the nice crappie, but I had to catch a lot of rock bass between each crappie. The rock bass seemed to now more dominate in that spot. The crappie only seem to inhabit these backwaters of the lake.
largemouth bass - I only caught a few when I tried. I don't think the rain helped.
sunfish - My son caught all of these in my resort's marina. He actually caught a lot more baby ones too. I'll conclude that the sunfish population is very healthy in the shallows.
perch - This one is interesting to me. We never actually targetted perch but found ourselves constantly catching them when we went for other species. The average size of the perch was larger than usual with almost all perch being between 9 - 11 inches. The walleye jiggers also caught many and also threw theirs in the live wells. We kept so many that I might develop yellow and green stripes by next year.
It was very sad to have to leave at the end of the week. Leech Lake is an oasis of the world. I wish the rest of you the best of luck with fishing and stay safe. Until next year....
Steve K.
