My wife Sarah and I ventured up to Red Lake in northern Minnesota earlier this month and were hosted by FLW Walleye League anglers Chad Benson and Ryan Klein. This is one place you've absolutely got to visit if you really love walleye fishing. When we got there we were told the bite was slow. I guess slow is a relative term on Red Lake as we managed over a dozen nice walleyes that first day. The second day the bite started later due to blue-bird skies, but the action was once again good and consistent.
The second night I also caught a bonus 33-inch northern that tested the limits of the drag on my small spinning reel. My only regret from the trip is that we lost two of the famed Red Lake crappies on consecutive bites. These crappies are so big and wide that oftentimes their body rubs against the 8-inch hole in the ice. As you can imagine, that resistance is enough to pop the hook out of the paper-thin mouth of the crappies. When this first happened to me I was dumbfounded. Then the exact same thing happened to Sarah and I figured it out. Sadly, those were the only two crappie bites of the trip.
If you want to read more about Red Lake, check out my feature story titled Upper Red Lake: Paradise on ice. It is located in the fishing section of the site.
