spirit lake

[Guest]

can some one give me some information on spirit lake or okaboji. i hear the perch are biting. i'm planning on fishing up there thurs thru sunday, if it is good. thanks

[WarrenA]

Last Fri. they were biting and a lot of people got there limit in 1 1/2 hours I was there Sat. and got 4 all afternoon. Have not heard how things went last Sun. Try off of Marble beach or off Buffalo run.

[rod bender]

Fished last Thursday and Sunday. Tried for the walleyes at dark and in the morning on the north end of WEST and on SMITHS BAY. Caught a couple of nice walleyes but nothing to brag about. Tried the perch for quite some time both days. Thursday we did pretty decent South of Buffalo Run and Saturday we couldn't find the nice perch. Tried North of Buffalo run. I heard the best bite was between 12 and 2. Kind of odd. We caught our fish in 12' but heard many people catching them in 20, 17, and even 8'? I think you'll just have to start punching holes and trying to stay away from the crowd if possible. I had my best luck on a sweedish pimple or a green marmuska. Others said they had their best luck on a very tiny jig right on the bottom. Good luck to you!!

[Walleye #1]

I fished Spirit all last week. All week I had fairly good luck fishing for perch. Two of the days I spent fishing around Buffalo run. We had really good success in this area, catching alot of 10-12"ers. Best depth seemed to be around 10', and the bite always picked up and got crazy around 3:30 until about a half hour after dark. I also fished off of Templar Park and Hales Slough. We caught 17 nice perch off of Templar, and about 13 out of Hales Slough. I think the Templar bite would have stayed steady throughout the afternoon, but a front moved through. We fished in about 18' of water off of Templar. At Hales Slough, we caught a ton of small walleyes, but had really good luck catching big perch with in the last hour of daylight. To top it off I caught a a decent size muskie on my perch rod, I thought it was a walleye, oh well, a fun fight to boot. Hales we were in about 10'. Like Rod bender said, you just have to fish for a while at one depth, and then move until you get on top of some fish.

As for presentations, the fish were really holding close to the bottom. We had our best luck fishing with the smallest buck shot jigging spoon, brownish color seemed to work the best. We usually tipped it with wax worms, but every now and then you needed to switch to a minnow to change things up. We also caught some on the pilkie, and I always had a bobber and swedish pimple set up right next to me. This had a minnow on it. The pimple was silver with either a stripe of green or orange. I probably caught 8 Perch all last week on this, but.........they were all over 10". So I would reccomend using a bobber set up in a hole a couple feet away from your jigging hole. If you are going to use the buck shot, because the rattle will bring them in from the buck shot and they will either want the rattle, but sometimes they would go right for the minnow set up. I know people were catching them on other set ups, but this is what worked for me. Shucks Bait and Tackle has great bait, and they do a pretty good job of telling you what is working and where. They will have a wide variety of lures if you need to pick something up. I guess that is my report. I never got over to try Okoboji, but I heard they were catching some nice walleye in Smith's bay, but it was a very slow bite. Be careful of the ice on east and west!!!

Hope you have a great trip
Catch some jumbos!

Walleye #1

PS. Just a note, this last week when I was fishing, I noticed that alot of fisherman like to keep 7-8" perch. Is this really neccessary, if we want the perch population to get better and if we want bigger perch then why not throw those back. I think there is to many people who want to say they caught their limit, when really you could catch 10-15 nice perch and have a small meal if that is what you are worried about. This can be a great perch lake year in and year out if we want it to be.

[Guest]

Check

[Guest]

Walleye 1,I guess I might be guilty of keeping medium perch. If their 8" and above I keep them.If you could get everyone that fishes Spirit to keep only perch that were 8" and above I think you would still have a a good chance to get your jumbos.That lake has always gone through cycles.I think that perch are their own worst enemy,not the fisherman.They feed on their own young.But I have seen 6" perch in peoples buckets and I think those should go back!Also some people drive a long way to fish Spirit and they don't want to go home with nothing so they keep smaller perch.
Warren #1, I see your from Rock Rapids? And you make lures? I'll leave my e-mail at the end of my post,could you send a e-mail?
I fished Spirit both Sat & Sun.(28 & 29th) on the southeast side of the lake.We were in 8-11' of water in the weeds.Ended up catching 40 on Sat. and kept 23,the biggest being 10.5".The bite was very good late in the day.Sun. we went back to the same spot and only caught 12 and kept 6,also picked up a crappie.If anyone ever wants to meet on Spirit and work together and find fish let me know as I fish it [email protected]
Best of luck,
Ryan Hale