Get ready folks, more (and bigger) fish are going to be caught this summer than ever before! The overall fish population should be at higher than average levels on most lakes throughout the state ( I might know of a few of these soon to be honey holes!) I think we are on the upside of the “cycle”. Lakes cycle, fish populations cycle, deer cycle, —everything cycles, and we are headed towards a great open water 2021 season for a couple of reasons starting with this spring!
Keeping fish on the line is more than chasing Facebook reports, luck, and a magic lure. It’s created through on the water observation, learning and retention, and paying attention to details. Oh yeh, knowledge of the watery environment is also a large factor in the success arena. Sure, it helps to glance at the DNR Lake Finder website to look for “intel” on a lakes fish populations, average sizes, stocking efforts, etc., but there is more to it than that. Hands on observation is definitely more accurate and reliable. In my opinion, lakes cycle about every 5-6 years. Meaning they max out in “pumping out” a seemingly bullet proof population of certain game fish about every 5-6 years. I believe there are couple of things that control the “unscientific” cycle. Some of these things are angling pressure (winter or summer), over harvest, a poor spawn/ year class or two, baitfish trends, AND a lakes ability to recover from all of these things. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fished a certain lake for years with the perfect amount of success in regards to angling pressure, consistency, numbers, and size of the fish. And then it all comes crashing down for 3-4 years because “word gets out” and the lake gets “wiped out”. Thus the cycle begins…or ends.
One full season to kill the lake, and 3-4 more seasons to rebuild it. My grandpa would always blame modern electronics for ruining fishing—“depth finders” were the devil. I disagreed with him. I say it always comes back to greed, hoarding, and poor decisions. I know quite a few anglers that have ZERO problem catching about whatever they want but typically only keep a few “eaters” for dinner. I call this practice “personal lake management”. Personal decisions to protect the fishery by using restraint and commonsense in regards to keeping fish to eat or mount. The far too generous outdated legal limits that allow anglers to over harvest are not included in personal lake management—in fact, they are frowned upon. Thankfully, within the last couple of fishing seasons there have been “forced” under harvest by anglers thanks to Mother Nature.
Roll back time to the ice fishing season of 2018 which started with a warm Fall and no safe ice to fish on until basically ½-2/3 of the winter was over. This alone saved uncountable numbers of fish being harvested everywhere on any lake. Then, due to large amounts of snow which accumulated on the ice throughout the 2018/2019 winter basically shut down the later part of the ice season due to crippling travel on the ice and under house flooding. At that point, ice fishing was done for most anglers that didn’t like to walk or use portables. So it had the same effect-- thousands of more fish spared on any given lake. Then again, a mid-April blizzard basically destroyed the usual open water Spring panfish slaughter—again,-- thousands of fish spared an eternity at the bottom of a full freezer. Last Fall was no different. The angling pressure was extremely limited by Mother Nature as well—cold, rain, snow, and wind tortured the months of September and October and kept the usual high number of Fall anglers off the lakes (and hunters out of the fields) again sparing the lives of countless walleyes and crappies everywhere!
Similar events were almost duplicated this last winter. A warm December kept the ice too thin for the masses of anglers which now depend on heavy trucks and 25’ fish houses in order to go ice fishing. Heck, many area lakes didn’t have a fish house on it until mid-January—again saving thousands of all varieties of fish—which are now available to catch! With so many prime fishing/catching/harvesting windows destroyed by Mother Nature, most anglers around the state had very low catch rates-- thus once again saving a countless number of all fish species just waiting to be caught this upcoming 2021 season. I’ve seen this type of thing many times throughout my 33 years of guiding. So yes, I’m personally excited for the great potential for my clients this upcoming 2021 fishing season—both in numbers and average size! Lotsa Fish! Lotsa Fun! Minnesota Fishing Guide Service, Captain Josh Hagemeister, 320-291-0708, 218-732-9919 www.minnesotaguideservice.com. www.minnesotaicefishhouserental.com.
