Lake Zumbro

[ctom]

This lake of 600 acres lies 12 miles north of Rochester and is wide open. Not a lick of ice remaining. This morning I went to do a look-see and ended up on a buddy's dock tossing some of my home-grown plastic crappie food and got a real fun awakening.

1/32 heads with any kind of smaller plastic and it was fish on. The small frys worked great and quite a few fish came on them. Some other plastics from other molds worked equally as well and in the end the two of us caught somewhere between 75-100 crappies in a couple hour span of time with several bass and sunfish added to the catch.

As a rule, this is the time when the largest crappies found on this lake make their open water debut on the upper end of the lake that opens up first. The fish were not there on the 13th of March, when the ice went off the lake. They were not there yesterday. Today....well, bingo. For over an hour we had singles and doubles going continually with the fish running upwards of 12 inches, not the largest we'll see but its early for this bite. It will last about ten days if the weather holds together. In a couple more days, 13 and 14 inch crappies will be common.

No particular color pattern was outstanding. Every color combo thrown out got fish. The water is still quite cold, probably running right around 38-40 degrees and with the nice overnight temps left from yesterday's record breaker, the fish were high in the water column and most were being taken with floats set at 30-36 inches. All plastic, not a hint of bait or scent, and every hit was like there would be no tomorrow.

I'll be there again tomorrow for the morning again. It'll be all c/r since I brought enough home today to feed Ma, a friend of her's and I at dinnertime tonight.

I did checking of my fishing journals from the last 37 years and this is the second earliest that this lake has opened up for fishing. The last time we saw it open this early the fishing was phenominal thru June, but then the summer played games with us. A few things have changed in those years and if we get a summer like we did back themn we may still be able to keep ourselves entertained until ice up in December.

[Denny Welch]

37 years of journals, huh?  These days I have trouble remembering the last 37 minutes.  Those journals are worth their weight in gold.

[ctom]

Ive got boxes of paperwork stored that have mold on the pages. lol

This lake is about ready to flip. When that occurs we have a couple great days of crappie crankin and then its the dead sea for about a week.  I took my thermometer this morning but I think its still suffering from winter cramps....no way can we have water as warm as what it showed, 38-39 degrees, depending on where I dropped it in the drink and how deep. Off this dock we didn't have 8 feet of water and that's the depth I use as a baseline for water temperature as a rule. The fish we got came from water shallower than that 8 foot threshhold and felt way colder than the 38 degrees the tool showed. I'll take a different thermometer tomorrow and soak it under a float at 8 feet out where we got most of the fish.

I love it when the crappies come into this area. While the bass season is closed right now, they have a hard time understanding the "don't bite" regulations the state insists on and offer some really fun alternative action should we happen to get a jig just a little too close to the rip-rap. It happens though and the smallies love to come out and play. Its hard to find a stronger fish than a four pound smallie in ice water.