This weekend in Otter Tail county was on fire. What an amazing fishery that does not get pounded like the rest of the big fisheries. I had one of the best fishing trips I have ever been on. Everything went in our favor including the weather. We headed up Thursday through Sunday. We fished Gills Thursday and Friday and chased walleye on Saturday and decided to stay in a sleeper on Otter Tail, wow did we make a great choice!
We started Thursday targeting Bluegill on a lake that we know has trophies and does not get much pressure. It is always particularly tough to find the fish here but we ended up finding them after about a mile of walking and 50 holes later. We found the fish very shallow which surprised me a little. The water clarity was not like it has been in the past, it seems a lot of the lakes in the area have lower visibility than normal. This worked in our favor because the fish were a bit shy at first. These giant bluegill roam in packs of 3-6 fish and seem to be the bully’s of the shallows (with the exception of the pike) in this lake. They would come in very quickly and would either bite extremely light where you could barely detect the bite, or would come in and absolutely smash your bait. It was really weird to see both sides of the spectrum at random. I did enjoy every minute of using my new TUCR Precision Noodle and the fish fight so nicely on it. We ended with over 20 gills at 10″, 5 in the 10.5″ range and 2 fish over 11″! There were a few 9″ fish mixed in but they were not prevalent like they normally are. It was by far my best 2 days of gill fishing. We also had 2 very large pike on flags that were lost after long battles that were very disappointing. All fish were released. We also wanted to get into some crappie but we just could not find the crappie. We drilled the break, the shallows, the basin and the holes and could not find them. We would get an occasional suspender in the shallows but 13″ was our biggest.
We switched gears to walleye on Ottertail for the last full day and it was an excellent choice. We chose to fish with a guide that had a sleeper because we don’t own a wheelhouse. I have always preferred being mobile especially while fishing walleye! We made a great choice and we got set up on a pretty prime spot. We stayed very mobile fishing outside of the house on the break about an hour out of every 2 hours which helped considerably. By noon we almost had our limit and decided to keep 4 a piece and have a nice fish fry for dinner. Around sunset it was GAME ON and we got into them pretty good. Ended up getting a healthy 25.5 on a flag and a 23.5 as the big fish of the trip. A bonus Eelpout came on a flag at about midnight and the overnight bite was a bit slow but we still picked up fish. Overall an unbelievable 24 hours on Ottertail!
I have to mention the ice was very sketchy Saturday. We did not drive out but got a ride out on a Ranger. There were quite a few trucks out there with 12 inches of solid ice. There was however a couple inches of water on top of the ice and visibility was very low due to constant fog. The water on the ice kept forming vortexes and would eat through the ice quickly which was a bit concerning. Our guide was very careful and we took all proper precautions.
Enjoy the pics!
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