Lake Minnitaki Fishing Reports

[prov1900]

Cool. Sounds like you had a perfect trip. Counting days...counting days.

[Fishook]

Headed up this Friday, the 29th. Been going to Minnataki since 1983 and make 1 or 2 trips per year. Have always stayed at Pickeral Arm Camp to the southwest of Donnleys. Nice to read reports from others who have enjoyed this treasured resource. Will make trip #2 this year on Sept. 10.

[prov1900]

Awesome. Give us a report to salivate over when you get back. We fished around that camp this year catching smallies, etc. Looks like a really nice operation as well.

Good luck and safe travels.

[Dan L]

Our group is heading to Donnelly's tomorrow. I will give a report when we get back. We have never done real well for smallies. Did you get much for numbers and size for smallies? If so what did you use. We pretty much fish walleyes in the morning and evening. Then pike in the afternoon.

[prov1900]

Dan, I have never fished up there this time of year, but we always get them on twister tails (BfishN Tackle) jig worms are my favorite, Kalins grubs being a very close second. The lake is loaded with smallies right near camp. Ask Darrel and he will give you specifics, just tell him not to give up the Jensen from Nebraska's hotspots .

SW Bay and Redpine always produced for us, fishing off the shorelines, esp points that plateau out. Size? Never caught one yet that was a true trophy, but I am going twice a year now to collect my MNR Catch and Release patch. Getting within a 1/2" each trip.

I would assume if it is warm, your early mornings would be dynamite with topwaters. Good luck and safe travels.

[Dan L]

We just got back from Minnitaki. The fishing was a litle slow for us this year. We still caught plenty of fish. The walleyes were anywhere from 5' to 26' deep. The biggest fish was 26". Are fishing for walleyes is mostly with 1/8 ounce jigs. Out in front of Donnelly's was as good as any place and also about 1 mile down the arm on the humps. The pike fishing was spotty but we did get some big fish. The biggest was 42 3/4 inches on a spoon. We also caught 2 38 inchers with quite a few in the mid 30's. All were released. One 39 inchers was also caught by someone in the camp but unfortunaly it was kept and cleaned. The pike were in there usual places such as the weeds and the rocks.

[fishingMN4eyes]

Heading up tomorrow. Any specific bait, color, presentation, or depth we should try?

[Fishook]

We just returned on the 6th after a great week. The water is really low compared to normal this time of year. I would guess almost 3 feet low. Fishing was excellent for walleye. We stay in the "arm" but almost always trek to SW Bay and Red Pine. Had our best luck in 6 -14 feet at the edge of the weedlines. Used jigs with tails and tipped with a small piece of nightcrawler. Biggest walleye was 26" but for every 17.5 inch (what we bring back) walleye, we estimate we caught/released 10-12 walleye 18" - 24". Only fished for pike the last day and kept 2 betweem 25-26". Lots of smaller pike so the future looks good there too. Great weather, good fishing, and cold beers (don't even try to take it out in the boat) - not much better than that.

[fishingMN4eyes]

Got back Saturday. We had very goofy weather with unpredictable wind while we were up there. Wind would blow for a few minutes then lay down. It made it difficult on days when the sun was beating down on us(which was almost every day). Fishing was pretty decent, but not spectacular. We brought home limits so no complaints! We caught fish anywhere from 6-30ft of water with a couple stragglers in 30+ft of water even. No color seemed to outfish any other but I will say that anything with chartreuse on it was a good bet. We only used minnows which we kind of regret but minnow fishing was pretty steady. Lots of the fish we caught were in the 12-15 range. Caught a good handful of slot fish though. Not real pigs, our big walleye for the week was a 24". For those who care, we caught quite a few northerns while we were walleye fishing. Some were pretty good size too.

I'd love to go up to this area in September in the hope of catching some bigger walleye. All in all it was a good trip up north though.

[prov1900]

Just got back about half an hour ago. Another spectacular trip to Minnitaki. Weather was perfect, a little chilly on the first day, but low 60's the last two. Lots of under slot, slot, and over slot walleyes. Got one big pike, 45"+. That thing was massive. Jig and minnow in 25 feet of water. No trout or smallies this time around. Fished for them a little, but couldn't figure them out. Water temps were around 58 degrees. Nothing was in the shallow water yet for us, although we hit a few eyes in the 11-15 mark. Everything else was a little deeper.

Great trip, wish it could have been longer. Can't wait till next May.

[bearplott]

Anybody been on Minnitaki this spring? We are leaving June 9th for a week. I read someone mentioned BFishN plastics. Any specific colors I should take? I have a bunch of their Ringworms, Paddletails and Superdoos.

[prov1900]

Just got back Saturday. Fishing was a little sporadic but really picked up later in the week. My fave ringworm is red/chartreuse. Paddle tail swim baits picked up a ton of fish too, but minnows wo

rked as usual.

[bearplott]

Great! What are the water levels like?

[prov1900]

Water came up about 2 feet (or so it seemed) since we got there last week. Lots of rain at night helped that. I would say the lake is at normal pool.

[fishingMN4eyes]

Heading up on Thursday. Any reports?

[Vikings_59]

FishingMN4eyes,

We just got back Saturday after being up there for a week. We had a good trip.

We had 2 days that were absolutely lights out. One afternoon we boated 88 walleyes in one boat and 108 in the other, fishing from 2:30 PM to 6:30 PM just outside of Redpine after a rainy, windy morning. The key for us was trolling VERY slow and sometimes jigging if we found a hot spot. The temps are way above average up there and the water is high. But things seem to change quickly up there. There were a couple "slower" times of the day but we still caught fish. We had a good couple mornings on the reef in 25'. We brought home our 6 man limit of 17.5" to just under 18" eyes. Biggest eye being 25", biggest pike being 41" and biggest Small mouth being 18.50". We brought up 750 crawlers and ran out the morning of our last day and the majority of the days we cut them in half to make sure we would have enough. Some boats we talked to were using minnows. But like previous years, it really hasn’t mattered what you use. Any fish we cleaned their stomachs were filled with Perch and minnows. (you will notice all the bait fish swimming in the shallows) One 26” pike we cleaned had a 3” jig head in its stomach. And the 18.50” smally had 4 crawfish swallowed.

Are you staying at Donneleys? We saw some nice wildlife again this trip. Moose on the side of the road as well as drinking out of the lake on the north side of the RedPine Narrows. Some nice Bucks as well. The morning it rained we were going to check out the landfill where the bears live, but before we left Darrell Donnelly told us it was closed because a kid opened his window of the family van to squirt one of the bears with his squirt gun. The bear wasn’t a fan and decided to tear the bumper off the van so the fill was closed for the day.

Good Luck.

[fishingMN4eyes]

Glad you had a good trip, gatoreye. We were staying at Winoga Lodge on Abram Lake and making the run to Minnitaki. Not much wildlife on our trip aside from the eagles we saw. Sucks about the bear landfill. Some idiots have to ruin stuff like that for everyone.

We really struggled up there. Here is my report:

We just got back yesterday from a Thursday-Sunday trip. Fishing was slow for the most part.

The boat I was in had good fishing on Friday pretty much all day. The fish we caught on Friday were all off the top of mid lake reefs. The reefs came up to 5-12 ft and we caught fish right on top and then on the drops off the sides. The other boat in our group struggled to catch fish on Friday.

Saturday was slower in the morning. Still fished the reefs and picked up a few but the best fishing came off of wind blown points that day. We were catching fish in 25-30' that day and the boat I was in caught a couple slot fish along with a nice 22" but that was the big for our trip. The other boat struggled again and the boat I was in took out the lower unit at the end of the day which put a damper on the trip.

Sunday was a struggle and with three people in our boat, we just couldn't find fish consistently. We could pick up a couple fish at every spot we went to but it would pretty much shut down.

The wind was constantly changing speed and direction. That, along with the warm temps and sun beating down on the water most of the days, made it tough to stay on fish. Minnows and crawlers were the baits of choice. They fished pretty equally but I'd say crawlers were slightly better. Good luck.