Lake Zumbro Report – 7/19

Ron (RHW) and I made a trip to our favorite lake yesterday, Lake Zumbro, in search of some crappies and bluegills. The lake has settled into definate summer time patterns. The fish are suspended over deep water, but finding what depth they are at and what they are willing to eat can be a challenge.

We used our usual choice of 9 ft. UL rods paired with Okuma reels. We had good action using mini-mites and small hair/feather jigs, tipped with a waxie or small piece of a crawler. Slow was the order of the day. Slowly move the boat and slowly presenting the bait produced numbers of nice fish.

When the sun was high, the fish were deeper and straight-lining the jigs down in 8-12 FOW produced the most fish. Later in the evening as the sun got lower, the fish moved up in the water column. We were able to use bobbers set at 3-4 ft. The fish seemed to also get more aggressive after the sun got lower in the sky.

We caught well over 100 bluegills and crappies, not to mention many smallmouth bass and even a northern. I managed to break my line lifting a very heavy crappie into the boat, looked to be all of 13 inches and quite thick. Guess we will need to start sliding a net under those big crappies…
The weather was great, the fish were very cooperative, and the company was great as usual. It was another enjoyable day on the water. Hope you get to go fishing soon!

A nice crappie.

Even a northern that was hooked in the corner of the mouth and did not bite through the line.

Nice report Mike, as usual.

John

Great report gentleman. Good to see Ron in one of the posts finally! It seems like it has been a long time…get the net

Looks like you guys had alot of fun. Glad to see Ron out there too catching Lake Zumbros most two popular fish spieces. Towards the end of August we three need to get out together and have some fun.
Thanks, Bill

Hey Chris, Got cordinates Bud??? [couldn’t resist]

Thanks for the report Mike. Training schedule is a bit hectic right now so I have to live my fishing experiences through others right now. Hopefully once the big race gets out of the way in September I can get some Fall fishing in.

Andy

Just a quick update. Ron and I made a trip to Lake Zumbro this morning. We got there by 7:30 and were off the water before noon. Surprisingly, it wasn’t bad out there for recreational traffic.
The fish were biting pretty well today. We each kept a meal of crappies and gills, as well as releasing at least 75 others. The bass were also hitting well with the largest being a nice 16 inch smallmouth.
We talked to a father/son team coming off the water at the same time as us. They had targeted northerns and did really well. They had 5 over 10 lbs. with the largest at 14 lbs, and several under 10 lbs. They caught them from fairly shallow water on artificial baits.

It was another great day to be out on the water, and another great morning of fishing!

It has been a long time since I have seen that many nice/big northerns at one time. My eyes popped out seeing them lay in the bottom of the boat.
Don’t take this wrong or as criticism, I guess I would rather pictures would have been taken and the fish released.
Are there big northersn in Lake Zumbro, oh yeah, there certainly are………..
Can’t get the image of those five hogs out of my mind.

Come on guys….quit rubbing it in….lol…sitting here inside catherized so I can’t be fishing and hearing fishing reports like this sure makes it hard to not be on the water. But keep em coming anyway as atleast I’ll know theres a good bite to come back to.

Fish like those bigger northerns need to be released in order to maintain a good fishery on Lake Zumbro for them. And fish that big don’t taste very good anyway. The meat is too tough.

I have been hearing reports of alot of bass, smaller in size, being caught too. It sounds like the bite has been good for several spieces of fish.

Northern Pike are a lot of fun to catch but I won’t even bring them into the boat unless absolutely necessary. It really gets your heart pumping when a big northern is flopping around and twisting up in your net. I have a very long device that I can usually clamp onto the crank bait hook while the fish is in the water (beside the boat) to do good release. Although when they swallow the complete crank it is difficult to do a good release. If you have ever been bit by a northern, you will never forget it… been there done that.

I have been bit once but luckily I had padded clothes on as it was during the winter while fishing below the dam at Bass Camp. Also got a hook in my finger once from a northern flopping around in the bottom of the boat during open water season at Lake City. Luckily it went in between the finger nail and skin so it wasn’t too bad pulling the hook out.
Thanks, Bill

Had a northern hooked on one treble hook from a crankbait, and my finger was hooked on the other treble from the same crankbait. I got the northern unhooked and released, then cut the treble hook with part of it still protruding from my finger. Fished another 4 hours and stopped at the hospital on the way home to have it removed.
Who says SBR IT is the only iron man around here?