An Adventure: The Fish-cation

[MrGiggles]

Unfortunately I have been busier than ever recently, have only been fishing a handful of times this year. However, the opportunity rose to use up some of my vacation days, and I took it.

I had about 5 days, my plan was to eventually end up south of Minneapolis to visit my brother for a day or two. Des Moines is about the halfway point between here and there, and Big Creek Lake just to the north of it offers opportunities for good crappie and walleye fishing.

I arrived Wednesday afternoon. Fishing was slow with showers off and on. Didn't catch anything, but got to explore and see everything. Thursday morning was more productive, I was able to get four crappie in the boat and one nice bluegill. Unfortunately the wind got very strong, peaking at 35mph and didn't let up until dark. I still tried to fish that afternoon but didn't catch anything. 

Friday morning was similar to Thursday, but slower. Nothing exciting. Saw the shad busting close to the boat, so I tossed my crappie jig into it. Something large grabbed it and broke or cut my line. Would've been nice to see what it was, wiper or musky I'm guessing. 

A bit humbled, I decided to load up and get everything packed up to head north. I struck up a conversation with another angler at the ramp, turns out he was a local guide that was wrapping up a musky trip, and about to head back out solo for walleye. He asked if I wanted to go with, don't gotta ask me twice. It was late in the morning at this point, we didn't catch anything exciting, although he did have a very large Musky come after his Rapala, after not seeing any that morning while actually fishing for them. We had some great conversations about the lake, how the fish behave there, and most importantly, everything I was doing wrong. 😅 Walleyes especially are in a very different pattern up there compared to here.

While I was very tempted to bring my boat up to Minnesota, I really only had the one afternoon to fish up there, and the Airbnb owners kindly offered to let me leave the boat at their place and pick it up on the way home, which I took them up on. I locked the boat up, unhooked and headed north on Friday.

I'm going to try and go back up there this winter and fish it through the ice if the conditions are right. It certainly is a neat area, and a very solid fishery for being so close to a big city.

Unfortunately there really wasn't anything noteworthy to take a picture of, so I didn't take any. 

[FishnDave]

It's a good fishery, heavily pressured, but every early Spring the DNR nets big walleyes and muskies to get eggs and milt from for their hatcheries.  Then they release them back into the lake, of course.  Some nice wipers in there as well.

Another lake not too far from there you might be interested in trying is Brushy Creek Lake.  Folks claim its OVERPOPULATED with muskies!  

[MrGiggles]

20 hours ago, FishnDave said:

It's a good fishery, heavily pressured, but every early Spring the DNR nets big walleyes and muskies to get eggs and milt from for their hatcheries.  Then they release them back into the lake, of course.  Some nice wipers in there as well.

Another lake not too far from there you might be interested in trying is Brushy Creek Lake.  Folks claim its OVERPOPULATED with muskies!  

You are sure right about the pressure. At any given time it seemed like there was a dozen or more boats out on that little lake. There's lots of bank access as well, and people were using it.

The guide that I met sent me a couple musky pictures the next day from Brushy Creek, spoke highly of it.