Crane Lake September Tackle & Tips

Hi, going to be staying at King Williams Narrows at the beginning of Sept. Have never fished Crane or Sand point before and I thought It’d be worth a post on here to discuss preferred techniques and tackle.

From what I can gather, small mouth on tubes or topwaters, and eyes on leeches with slip bobbers. Will be checking in at the resorts as well.

We’ll have kids with (5 and 3 yrs) so more concerned with catching than trophies. Also if we can get one dinner of eyes we’ll be pretty tickled.

I’ll post up some pictures and a mini report as a thank you.

I think you have a plan. Leechs under a slip bobber thrown up by the shoreline is where I would start. 4′ or less. If you can located a weedbed adjacent small / medium size rocks all the better. Be prepared for squealing kids and big smiles!

If you have a livewell put a few minnows in there and prop the door open. The kids will watch and play with them for hours.

Have fun.

Thanks Dutchboy, Really that shallow? What’s pulling the fish in there in early september? I’d have guessed they would be deeper (15-25′) out on structure. But I don’t know the fishery.

Looks like water will be in the mid 60’s. Here’ my plan:

Smallies:
-Plastic tubes, plastic worms, and bobbers for the kids up shallow.

Walleyes:
Game plan will be to bring bottom bouncers & Crawler Spinners, Cranks, Jig & Minnow, Drop Shot rigs with plastics (leeches are $10/doz), and Some slip bobber setups, and a jigging rap because it seems to work great for youtubers for deep fish even though it’s never panned out for me.

Saw a report that eyes were in 25-35ish feet of water.

Brady Korwin wrote:

Looks like water will be in the mid 60’s. Here’ my plan:

Smallies:
-Plastic tubes, plastic worms, and bobbers for the kids up shallow.

Walleyes:
Game plan will be to bring bottom bouncers & Crawler Spinners, Cranks, Jig & Minnow, Drop Shot rigs with plastics (leeches are $10/doz), and Some slip bobber setups, and a jigging rap because it seems to work great for youtubers for deep fish even though it’s never panned out for me.

Saw a report that eyes were in 25-35ish feet of water.

Dutchboy has experience with the lakes up there so I would try them shallow. I too have a hard time fishing for walleyes that shallow but some lakes that is where the ones biting are.

I’m certainly not going to overlook the tip!

We’ll have a Helix with side imaging along. I will definitely be taking some shallower passes to see what I can see.

We’ll probably fish shallow with the kids too. They’ll love even little bass.

They just had the International Falls Bass Championship on Rainy this weekend. Seems it was about a 50 / 50 split between a shallow and deep bite on Friday. On Saturday the wind pretty much killed the deep bite for most of the day.

Took 38#’s for 10 fish to win. There was huge numbers of fish caught but as with all tournaments getting the big fish was the key. On Rainy the big fish are generally deeper, the numbers are shallower. Just go fishing, you will find them.

I’ll be listening to that tourney at work today. Nice tip! Thanks.

Was up on mid-Namakan (Wolf Pack area) 8/17 to 8/21.
Best depth for slot and over eyes was 26′, caught lots of small’s in 30-33′.
Leeches and crawlers (leeches are done up there from what we were told by most all bait shops north of Virginia) were about even.
Highlight of the trip was a buddy caught a 54″ sturgeon on his walleye rod, lindy and crawler. Took 40 minutes to get boatside.
Water temps were 73 from start to finish.
Good luck with the kiddo’s!

Good to hear the crawlers are working. Most bait shops don’t even have leaches now and if they do they are spendy.