Fishing Report for Upper Red and Cass Lake

Upper Red Report…2-13-11….Fishing over the weekend was on the slow side in my neck of the woods on Red Lake. Everyone caught some walleyes and had a fish fry out of the deal, but no big increase in numbers of fish to report. Most of my shacks have been getting anywhere from 4-10 walleyes a day, the past few days. Wish I had  a better report for everyone,  but that’s what I have been hearing and seeing on Upper Red lately. The bottle bass have been hitting better than I have ever seen before! I think they always bite better when the walleyes aren’t.

Take care…..Chad

Cass Lake Report…2-13-11….Things on Cass Lake are looking up! Most of the slush issues are better and Ron at Wishbone Resort and I have a pretty good road system plowed now. We have been doing quite a bit of scouting and hole drilling in the last few days and hit some pretty good perch fishing yesterday and today. Quite a few 9-12 inch perch hit the ice and man do they taste good fresh out of the lake! We will keep expanding on what we have found and keep you posted.

I will have 4 of my sleeper houses on Cass by this weekend and Ron at Wishbone Resort has one sleeper and cabins/day houses available if anyone wants to give Cass a try during the latter part of the ice fishing season.

Take care….Chad  

Cass Lake Report….2-9-11….I pulled two of my sleepers down to Wishbone Resort on Cass this week and brought one of the V-plows down from Red to start making some roads. I met up with Ron and we decided to take a ride in his track vehicle out to Buck Bar to see how things looked before I put the plow down. We are still finding areas of slush even after the cold weather we have had. I put the plow down to see how far I would get before I hit a slush pocket and only went about 200yds and back out on that road attempt. We decided to head out to Big and Little Wishbone Bars where we already have an existing road and try to expand the road system out that way. This area was froze up nicely and I made several roads up, over and around the structure. We will be doing some scouting today and hopefully have a good fishing report for you? Take care……Chad

Upper Red Report….2-8-11….After moving back in to the shoreline structure last week the walleye bite has been slow to fair. Over this past weekend with the stable weather and warmer temps, the fishing wasn’t too bad for some of the guys. One house did 30 fish for two days and the rest of them were in the 10-15 range for the weekend. When the temps dropped and the wind started howling this week the fishing got a little tougher. Hopefully with the milder weather forecasted for this coming weekend the numbers will rebound some. Take care…..Chad

Upper Red Report…1-26-11……The walleye bite on Upper Red was fairly slow for the past two or three days for most of the people fishing in our area. Yesterday afternoon and evening there was a better bite and the numbers of fish seemed to be climbing. There are some big pike cruising the area with most of them breaking off under the ice. I did have a 12 year old get a 36 incher through the hole and he was pretty excited about catching his biggest fish ever. Pretty Cool!! Hopefully the bite is good for everyone this weekend.

Take care…..Chad

Upper Red Report….1-22-11…..The walleye fishing has been pretty good over the last four days or so. We made a pretty big jump with the houses and it seems to paying off with quite a few happy fishermen and fisherwomen. Most of the fish have been in the 15-17 inch range and a few bigger ones mixed in. An occasional good sized perch and nice pike have been showing up also. There is quite a bit of traffic in the area now & I’m not sure how long the bite will hang in there. Everyone is spread out fairly well, so hopefully the fish stay there for a while.

The best presentations have been smaller jigging spoons with a minnow head attached to the treble hook and also plain red or colored hooks on a set line. Red Glow, Chartreuse, Yellow, & Gold have all been working pretty well.

Good Luck & Take care……Chad

Upper Red Report…1-17-11…..The walleye fishing over the past weekend was so, so for most of my guys. Everyone caught a few but not a lot of big numbers. There have been quite a few perch showing up with a few nice ones mixed in. Some 36-42 inch Pike have been caught in the past few days as well. I have heard of three crappies being caught too.

We have been fishing out along the reservation line about 3-4 miles out in 16-17 ft of water. Quite a few guys were getting some pretty good action earlier last week and the bite seemed to slow down over the weekend.

Upper Red Report 1-12-10…....Fishing has been pretty good for the past few days and hopefully continues. A good mix of walleye, perch and even a crappie or two have been showing up. I haven’t seen too many big pike so far this year. They seem to get more active later in the season.

Good Luck & take care…….Chad

Upper Red Report 1-1-11……..Happy New Year to everyone & hope you all had a fun and safe time over the holidays. We are starting the New Year on Upper Red with a lot of wind and blowing & drifting snow. There are quite a few 4 foot drifts around the houses and it will take some time to clean up once the wind slows down.

The fishing has been pretty decent over the last few days for most of the people. Some shacks have been doing very well and some of them only fair. Everyone is catching a few fish anyhow. I talked to Matt form Battle River yesterday and he caught a nice 38 inch pike and also a 27 inch walleye in the same day. They have been having pretty decent action with the walleyes where they are at also. Ryan Klein and I spent quite a bit of time yesterday opening up the roads after the blizzard and his customers have been doing about the same as mine for walleyes

We will be working on getting the roads widened out again for the next couple of days & the off road travel will be a little tougher now.

Good Luck & Take Care……Chad

Upper Red Report 12-30-10…….The walleye fishing on Upper Red has been slow to fair since the day after Christmas. Most people have been catching enough for a meal or two and throwing back a fair amount of slot fish. Today the action seemed to pick up quite a bit, with better numbers showing up in the buckets. Hopefully things keep picking up?

The ice conditions on Upper Red are still a little sketchy the further out you go. The first mile is a pretty solid 12+ inches, but when you get out beyond that it is pretty easy to find 7-8 inch ice under some of the drifts. We pushed our road out a bit further today and I hit some thinner ice at about one mile and we stopped there. Everything up to that point was good. It might be a while before anyone gets more than a mile or two out this year with the upcoming storm in our forecast. I have seen some wheel houses pushing out quite a ways in the last couple days and I know they are going over some thinner ice areas to get out there. With another 6-12 inches of snow on top of what we already have the thinner ice areas that are out there could cause somebody some trouble. Hopefully with the upcoming cold temps forecasted in the next week we make some more good ice and we can safely get out into the lake a little further sometime in January.

Good luck to everyone and be careful out there!!.......Take care……Chad

Upper Red Report 12-21-10……The walleyes have been cooperating fairly well during the past few days on Upper Red. The best bite has still been early to mid-morning and then again late afternoon into the evening. Last night some of the guys had a pretty good night bite as well. The best colors for many of my guys have been chartreuse and red glow jigs and spoons. The plain old red hook with a split shot has been doing well too. A few nice pike in the 34-36 inch range showed up in the last couple of days also.

The ice conditions are good for vehicle travel along the first break or ½ to ¾ mile out. The ice is thinner out further and as far as I know no one has a road out too far yet. The fishing should remain pretty good along the shoreline for a couple more weeks and then hopefully we can push out a little further.

Good luck out there & take care…..Chad

Upper Red Report/Ice conditions 12-15-10………The ice is looking pretty good for lighter vehicle traffic this weekend. There is a solid 12+ inches everywhere I have been driving on our trails. There is a band of broken up/rough ice about 1/2to3/4 mile out that has some deeper snow around it and I wouldn’t try to go through there yet.

The walleye fishing has been pretty good, anywhere from 10-20 fish a day seems to be what I am seeing & hearing. The 10-12 ft. depths have been the most consistent. Glow Red Buckshots/Macho Minnows working good. I also did pretty good with a smaller glow red Jiggin Rap yesterday. I like to tip the jiggin rap with a small piece of minnow tail or head. The same with the spoons. It has mostly been an off and on all day  kind of bite, with a little more action early and later in the day. I haven’t spent a night out there, so I’m not sure what is happening after dark.

Good Luck & be careful out there……Chad

Upper Red Report 12-7-10…….Well, things aren’t looking too bad out of Carsella’s Access at this point. We have been working on the access, smoothing out the trail to the lake and also marked out about two miles of road out on the lake. Ryan Klein and I headed out this morning on ATV’s and staked out a road straight north/north west about a mile, out to 15ft. We found anywhere from 5-10 inches of ice depending on the snow cover. Areas with no snow had 7-10 inches and the deeper the snow down to 5 inches. If you decide to venture out, definitely try to stay away from the rough ice & deeper snow drifts and you should be fine.

            We also staked a trail out to the rocks about a mile east/north east of Carsella’s. Ice conditions were about the same on this trail. Up to 10 inches of ice on bare ice areas and down to five under the snow drifts. The forecast for the next week looks pretty good for ice making, so hopefully later next week we are starting to think about ½ ton & less vehicle travel? We definitely don’t need any more snow for a while or it will definitely slow things down once again.

            We are going to stake out a trail over to the Res. Line tomorrow sometime and do a little more fishing. We fished this evening out on a 14ft rock hump that was pretty good last year. We ended up catching 5 walleyes in a couple hours. All of the fish were in the 14-16 inch range. It got a little chilly around dusk and we were fishing outside, so we didn’t stay quite as late I would have liked. There were quite a few times in the couple hours that we fished that there were 2-3 fish on the electronics looking at the bait, but not very aggressive. I’m sure if we were in a warm fish house and fished longer we would have caught more. Anyway, got enough for a fresh Red Lake Walleye fish fry! MMMMM!!

Upper Red Ice/Fishing Report…12-1-10…..Well, I took a walk out on Upper Red a couple days ago to check ice conditions and to do a little fishing if the ice was good enough. There was 2-3 inches of good ice with a couple inches of frozen slush on top. The ice conditions were better than I thought they would be with much of the snow that was on the lake soaked up by flooding and mostly refrozen.  We edged our way out a quarter mile or so and fished from mid afternoon until dark. We only ended up getting two walleyes about 15 inches just before dark. I had a few lookers that came in earlier but couldn’t get a bite out of them.

Hopefully this last snowstorm that just came through didn’t dump too much snow on the lake? We got 3-4 inches here in Bemidji and I’m not sure how much they got north of us. I’ll head up and check it out tomorrow and see what it looks like on the south shore & keep you posted.

Take care….Chad

Upper Red Report 11-22-10…….Things aren’t looking too good for the early ice fishing as of today on Upper Red. Quite a bit of the lake froze over in the last few days and we ended up getting 8-10 inches of snow dumped on top of the thin ice. I’m not sure what will happen in the days to come. All I know is there is going to be a lot of slush and lousy ice conditions for a while on Upper Red. The lake froze over fairly rough this year as well. I’m not sure if the lake is totally frozen over or if there is still some open water somewhere out in the middle. Right now it looks like it’s going to be some tough plowing with all the rough, broken up ice out there. It will take some time now for everything to freeze solid out there and to get some safe ice conditions. Hopefully now we get some cold temps for a while to freeze up all the slush and slop that is out there now?

I’ll keep you posted…..Take care…..Chad

Upper Red Ice Report…..11-18-10…..It’s getting to be that time of year to dig out the all the ice fishing equipment and get everything ready for the upcoming season. It has been a fairly mild November this year, so not much ice has been made up to this point. The smaller ponds have started to freeze over in the last week and it sounds like next week quite a few lakes will freeze over. If the current forecast holds true for the Thanksgiving week Upper Red and most of shallower lakes should be locked up by the end of next week. That is if we get a calm night or two? Hopefully Mother Nature is kind to us and the wind lays down so Upper Red and Lake of the Woods will freeze up relatively smooth. It makes it a lot nicer for plowing and traveling out on the larger lakes.

            It should be another great year for pulling walleyes, pike and jumbo perch up the ice holes on Upper Red once again! The houses are booking up pretty fast for the weekends in January. I am actually totally booked for January weekends but I know Ryan Klein (ryansredlakerentals.com) still has openings and also Battle River Rental has openings. Their links are on my web-site and both outfitters have really nice shacks and work very hard to keep them clean and on the fish. We will be running out of the Carsella Access once again. Hopefully he gets the lodge completed sometime this year or I’m not sure about next?

            Good luck to all the early ice adventurers this early ice season and be careful out there! I’ll keep you posted on ice conditions and fishing reports.

Take care…..Chad

Cass Lake Ice Report…..11-18-10…..Cass Lake is one of the last lakes to ice over due its deep water. No signs of ice yet out there. Typically Cass freezes over during the first week of December and a person usually doesn’t want to drive out there until almost January. As soon as we get some decent ice Ron at Wishbone Resort will be opening up in the winter and renting some sleepers and will also have cabins and day houses to offer. They will also have full bar, some food, fish cleaning etc…Their link is on my web-site also if you are interested.

            I will be running my sleeper houses out of Wishbone later in the ice season for mainly its Jumbo Perch fishing. Cass Lake has some really good perch fishing to offer and the area of the lake we will be fishing is very quiet with little fishing pressure.

            If you are interested in giving Cass Lake a try this ice season or need more information, shoot me an e-mail or call anytime (218) 556-0823. If you are looking to fish earlier in the ice season give Ron or Traci a call at Wishbone Resort.

            We’ll keep you posted on ice conditions and fishing reports in the weeks to come!

Take care…..Chad

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Cass Lake, Lake Bemidji, Lake Plantagenet, Upper Red Lake

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