Tonka – Bay of Maxwell leading to channel to North Arm

Hey Everybody,

I was out on Tonka yesterday to just run my boat and fish for crappie. Anyways, I am not as familiar with this lake as many others and saw a very large amount of folks (>50) lined up on shore casting into the small bay between the landing on Maxwell right up to the channel leading to North Arm. A couple folks were anchored and fishing the same area from a boat. Considering that we are out of season for sport fish, what were all of these folks targetting? I saw a crap-ton of carp up shallow while floating around, were all of these guys targetting the carp? I should have asked someone, but always hate to interrupt someone while they are fishing.

Crappies.

Not umcommom to see people shore fishing on various parts of the lake.

North Arm is where my Gramps would take me as a kid in the boat or off shore. Even Maxwell there to the left of boat landing before they redid it, and before the milfoil showed up was a phenomenal spot for fish as well. Nice lily pads that whole area.

But as Francis said any spot on Tonka during the spring/summer is going to have people. I was surprised how many were lined up in the channels at midnight on opener last year from shore.

The channel leading into North Arm from Maxwell Bay has been good to me in early season for Crappies. If you are in a boat you can look into the water on the north side of the channel and see a gigantic brush pile that is submerged. A lot of folks fish the shore fishing areas and public docks that are located right next to that bridge. Most will be panfishing, I don’t typically see too many folks targeting carp. Did you know 50% of Lake Minnetonka’s biomass is Carp? If folks could start removing carp from the lake in massive amounts, it may improve the spawning situation for other species. A lot of the northern bays on the west side of Lake Minnetonka have muddy bottoms and heat up before other bays on the lake providing for great spring crappie fishing.

The amount of carp you see early in the year is unreal.Other then commercial netting I dont think there would be a way to dent the carp population.Some of the channels are good all of the open water season,figure out which ones have current and baitfish at the same time.