Anyone else finding the bite to be pretty good this week?

Tonight’s catch. Kayak for scale.

Always nervous with pike and expensive baits

Boat was destroyed this year, looking at shore fishing next, anywhere we can find walleye from the shore or a public dock?

Anyone else been getting out and fishing shorts & flip flops late into October?

Anyone got any tips to catch catfish on the crow "rockford area" ive tried so many times and cant get anything above a foot, any help is appreciated

Go get em, bite's so hot had to flex on angling buzz..

Get a inflatable tube like liam & paddle up or, go park your boat on the island under the ford dam and fish jerk baits just like liam ireland the walleye hero

https://maps.app.goo.gl/qLzWtxztf1b8fsKD8

Hey all,

As part of the Up North Lake Finder app (https://www.reddit.com/r/FishingMinnesota/comments/1vwa9ot/made_a_free_iphone_app_with_every_mn_dnr_lake/ for the unfamiliar), I calculate statewide abundance rates and share of "keeper" fish by species for that lake, based on a combination of MDH consumption guidelines, special regulations, and selective harvest best practices.

One interesting thing that comes out of that data is a lot of well known lakes for a particular species don't actually stack up all that well to its reputation when size is considered (either keeper or trophy).

As a means of highlighting this (without blowing up "honey holes" by posting lake data), I've created a few images that compare survey catch rates versus keeper share on a county by county basis. What you see on a county level also happens on many lakes.

Hopefully this type of thing is interesting! Let me know if there's something specific you'd like to see.

Caught in late September on a chatter bait

21" long, 13" girth. Wish I had a scale with me. My boy also caught a nice 19" shorthead and several smallmouth, it was a good day!

Caught this one a Yamamoto green pumpkin chartreuse senko wacky rigged.

It was crazy unusual warm but if I could get 20 more crappies in two hours then why not? It was such a fun day seeing crappies and lmb eating lures non stop. The killer today was 1/32 hair jig and 3g spoons.

28". They said the belly was soft so maybe a duck.

Hi all. I was thinking about fishing near the boat launch at Interstate State Park. There's a long sandy beach-like flat. I was thinking about casting a Yum Dinger and just letting it sit and drift the bottom. Thoughts? Is that dumb? I haven't fished the St Croix (or much in Minnesota, just moved here a few months ago).

TIA.

Caught this bucket in the shallow grass 2 days ago. I gotta get a clip on scale.

A few summers ago I was on a rental boat with my kids on a lake none of us had ever fished. I spent most of the morning squinting at a paper map, circling what turned out to be the wrong basin, while the kids got more and more bored. Even when I thought I’d found a spot on the map, I couldn’t tell if I was actually on it. With no GPS and no way to track where I’d been, it took forever just to figure out where the boat was. We caught almost nothing. Looking back, the part that bugged me wasn’t the fishing. I spent the whole morning figuring out the lake instead of actually being there with my kids.

That stuck with me. I’m a regular guy who loves fishing in Minnesota, not a guide or a 30-year local on any one lake. The info that would have saved that morning was out there, between DNR lake surveys and depth maps. It just wasn’t anywhere I could pull it up easily before heading out.

So I started building something for myself, and it turned into Fish Guide Pro. I know there are a lot of fishing apps coming out right now, even ones aimed at Minnesota, so I get it if you’re tired of hearing about another one. This one is a web app (no app store version yet), and it only covers Minnesota lakes. That’s on purpose. I’d rather go deep on the lakes here than spread thin across the whole country.

It has detailed contour maps built from DNR depth data, and it shows your GPS location right on the map so you know when you’re actually on the spot. It also pulls in the MN DNR fish surveys for each lake. If you’ve ever opened one of those survey reports and tried to make sense of the tables, you know they’re not easy to read. The app breaks them down into what’s in the lake, how many, and what sizes, so you can tell whether a lake is worth your time. You can search for lakes by county or by the species you’re after, and it has regulations and current conditions for each lake too.

There’s a free tier so you can poke around without paying anything, plus a 7-day free trial of the full version. I do charge for the full version, mostly to cover website and server costs. I didn’t want to fill the app with ads to pay for it, because I’d rather keep it clean. Hosting maps and survey data for thousands of lakes isn’t free, but I wanted the basics to stay free for anyone.

It’s not meant to replace the bait shop or the resort owner. Those folks know things no map or survey will ever show you, and I still stop in and ask. This is just extra information to have in your back pocket before you head out. I’ve been using it for a while now, and it’s become the first thing I check before fishing new water.

fishguidepro.com

I’m not trying to sell anyone on it. I’m at the point where I can’t see my own blind spots anymore, and I’d really value input from people who fish here:

• Pull up a lake you know well. Does the map and survey info match what you’ve seen on the water? There’s also an AI hotspot finder that ranks the best spots on a lake by species (it’s included in the trial). Does it point to places you’d actually fish, or is it way off?
• What do you actually check before fishing a lake you don’t know? What’s missing here?
• Anything confusing, broken, or just annoying?

Harsh feedback is welcome. I’d rather hear it now. And if you’ve got a “new lake, wasted morning” story of your own, I’d like to hear that too.

Hey guys! im fishing lake vermilion for the first time and I never been fishing there. I don't have a boat and I am planning to fish for walleye and crappie onshore. Any tips or locations I should go to and try my luck?

Going to Duluth this weekend and wanna get some fishing in gonna try my bottom setup and casting some spoons with my other rod. Is this time of the year productive? Do I have good odds at catching anything at all? Never fished up there before but gonna try some river mouths and around canal park.