Now that walleye season is done on Leech Lake we are going to be setting up the sleeper houses in Perch territory! The Sno bear will be shuttling groups out to Tullibee areas, white fish areas, Crappie areas, and blue gill producing areas. We have the option now to take the Sno Bear down some remote snowmobile trails and get on some lakes tucked deep back in the woods! We are seeing some big crappies on Leech in some remote areas! The pan fish bite is going to be on fire! Last weekend travel off our plowed road was near impossible even with chains. We will be using our plow truck to plow spots for people with there own wheel houses out of Trappers Landing. We plan on plowing a road into Miller Bay and setting up for the big perch migration out of the deeper basins in the lake into the bays.
I have been tipping tungsten jigs with Northland plastic Impulse MayFly larvae pink and white. See picture below. I have also been using the the VMC tungsten wax tail jigs 1/16th ounce jigs. These jigs have been working for Perch, Crappies, and Blue gills. Wax worms and red spikes have been working also. The plastics have been more efficient. Plastics are out lasting wax worms 10/1. Fishing the smaller lakes the schools of crappies and blue gills hole hopping with this nice weather is a must. Two guys can hole hop and catch some nice numbers of fish and sort out the keepers much faster. Every 5th hole while hopping we have been finding massive schools of fish that fill up the water column from 3ft on up to 13ft off the bottom. While hole hopping we are working as a team. Sometimes even tag teaming the same water column. One guy is unhooking his fish while the other guy sets the hook on a fish in the same hole. While on these schools the key has been to drop your bait down below the school and play keep away all the way up to about 10ft off the bottom and pause watch your rod tip and the slightest lift on the rod tip or twitch set the hook. We have been releasing the crappies over 12.5 inches. My friend David Baxley and his boy came up to fish last weekend and his boy Brock hooked into a 14.5 inch crappie at 4 years old! Talk about some excitement in the Sno Bear. The pan fish bite has been better when the sun is out.
Pictured below my last walleye for the season that I caught while in the wheel house measured 26 inches. The Mayfly hatch the last two weeks caused a slow walleye bite along with the fresh water shrimp. For those of you who are just looking to get a room and doing some guided outings I highly suggest using Trappers Landing on Leech they have some nice rooms and outfit you with extra fishing gear if needed. We can shuttle you out in the Sno Bear at a discounted price if you do not want to do the whole Sno Bear Package and would prefer to just fish portables. Here is a link to a video of some walleye fishing we did on Upper Red Lake.

Pictures below are from the last week in the Leech Lake area!

jigs

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It has been a busy week as we are still finishing up our transition down onto Leech Lake this week. We have two more houses on Upper Red Lake finishing up the last rental today and tomorrow. I have two guys fishing on Upper Red Lake and guys fishing in the Sno Bear out on Leech today. The guys on Leech are fishing for pan fish during the day then transitioning into walleyes before the sun goes down. Hoping the plow truck will be up and running Wednesday it has been down for a week and a half. The timing chain key way sheered off and caused a huge mess of problems. The snow we have been plowing on the lake has been hard as concrete in some spots. Ill have to try take it easy on the truck from here on out.
I look forward to hearing the fishing report from the guys out on the sno bear outing today. We found some nice gills and crappies pictured below we caught them in about 3 hours and released a hand full of fish also. The walleye bite has been spoty some customers are picking up a few here and there just not much consistency with walleyes. Upper Red Lake more and more crappies are being seen. Tungsten jigs tipped with wax worms have been the ticket for catching the pan fish. I have been telling customers to bring a scoop of fat heads, a scoop of shiners, and a 100 count wax worms. I expect the pan fish bite to heat up over the next couple days into the weekend. We are fishing the pan fish in 7-8ft of water.
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We are finishing our transition this week down to Leech Lake. We had one rental last weekend on Upper Red Lake and three groups down on Leech Lake this last weekend. Upper Red Lake the groups got a few walleyes here and there but it was slow. Down On Leech Lake we set up the sleeper houses for walleyes and the bite was slow also. Sleeper houses had a mixed bags a walleye or two one house had a tullibee, a few nice perch along with a few pike being caught. One group decided to do a Sno Bear Outing and get some pan fish. So we went out and did some hole hopping. Caught and released some fish also. Pictures below are from the guided sno bear outing. While fishing pan fish we used Tungsten and wax worms.

What a busy 7 days it has been have not had much time to put together a report with the 15 hour days scouting on Leech, taking reservations and getting the plow truck to a mechanic on Sunday after plowing 4ft drifts that are hard as concrete from the 30+ mph sustained winds. I scouted out on Leech last Thursday primarily for Crappies, Perch, and Blue gills. I scouted 90% of the time with the underwater camera and covered about 40 miles of ice marking way points on the Hummingbird. I did find what looked like 12+ inch crappies and some 9-10 inch blue gills. I drilled around 30-40 holes in one bay by hopping around in the sno bear only one hole at dropping the camera looking for some good standing green vegetation to set up on. I did not spend more than 5 minutes with the camera on each spot just looking for fish before we make the full transition onto leach. I put a line down and it was like a roundabout set up on top of some green cabbage vegetation. What I mean by a roundabout is that first a few bass would circle under the sno bear then some nice blue gills followed by some nice crappies. Then out of nowhere a pike just blows up the area crashing into the reeds and cabbage stirring up the water! On Leech I hooked into a few huge bass and pike. Just need to find a spot that the pike are not so active although some customers want to go after big pike. I have the spot for them. Last weekend we had 3 groups in six houses and had mixed reports due to the fact that he had a group of 12-13 that rented 3 houses for a bachelor party. They did a good job cleaning up and that was all I asked for. Not disappointed by them at all but literally would not have needed to drill the holes in one of their houses as it was primarily for the keg of beer. The other house with the Bachelor party had 4 guys in it with the Bachelor and they had some dedication to fishing. Pictured below is Alex the Bachelor with two pike he landed. The larger pike was over 10lbs. The other Grand Castle “part of the Bach party” only managed a couple walleye due to the fact that the stereo was cranked with the outdoor speakers and the music inside. Lots of laughter with this group as they played cards for several hours. Most fish iced out of the Bachelor parties houses were done by the few guys that did not go to the bar! This house is set up 30ft from the crappie crib.
One group of 5 guys in the Silver Grand Castle they had 4 walleyes and lost a few at the hole along with flags flying with the tip ups. It was a slow weekend for this group. They did have fun that is for sure. I let them use the underwater camera for the weekend. This group left now I currently have 4 people in this house husband wife and two young kids. I did not move the house with my truck being fixed they managed to hook into two crappies one 13.5 inch pictured below and another monster lost at the hole. This house is in around 9.5ft of water they have one more night of fishing. They also got a pike and a couple walleyes. I gave them the option to jump into a house sitting over by one of the cribs before dark to see if it produces more walleyes. I noticed the crib seems to hold a cloud of shiners above them. So it seems 30ft from the crib is the best spot for the houses. We are going to leave two houses on Upper Red Lake this weekend and transition three of them down to Leech Wednesday and Thursday. Few pictures below from the last few days. Pictured below is also the Northland Glo-ShotTM Spoon that caught the crappie.
10 lbs pike
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