UPL On Lake Minnetonka

[sandmannd]

Today those of us that fish the Ultimate Panfish League had our second event of the season. This one was on the Upper Arm of Lake Minnetonka. All the pre-fishing had been pretty brutal with lots of little fish coming through the holes. My partner Trav and I didn't have high hopes for making a good showing but were looking forward to giving it a try.

The rules are simple, stay within 100' of your partner and catch fish. Crappies have to be over 8" and sunnies over 7", you get seven of each fish. Once you reach seven you can keep one bonus fish of either species.

8 AM came and we headed out. Teams in all directions. We started in our fist spot on a drop from 12 to 20 FOW. We pulled two fish, both of which were small perch and we took off. We drove to the northern part of the Upper Arm and drilled a few holes. We found sunfish and were on them good in about 14 FOW. We popped up a house and sat in the warm for a couple of hours. There was a lot of sorting but we got most of our seven sunfish there over 7".

After a couple of hours we packed up and moved a little farther north to a deeper hole of about 25 FOW. Fished it for a while and I dropped down some Reel Weeds around me. It didn't take long and my flasher was lit up. I managed a couple of weighable crappies after the weeds were down but they were just over the 8" mark. Trav was still getting a few sunnies but the size was down so it was time for us to move again.

We move to the SE side of the Arm and punched a few holes. Dropped down in our first hole and pulled a little bigger crappie out. Trav tried a couple of different holes and on his fourth hole he pounded a 10" crappie. My hole dried up and Trav was on them decent. I punched a few more holes but scattered the fish. We fished around the holes we had for a bit and the fish came back. Not much for size so we moved a hundred feet or so and found some fish. Sunnies again with some small crappies mixed in. I was catching fish pretty consistent while Trav moved a little and started hitting the crappies. He called me over and it was on!! We had hit the crappies and were loading up on them. Trav managed some great 10" to 12" crappies. About 1:30 we double checked the measurements on all the fish and counted, we had our 15 fish! We fished another 20 minutes to see if we could get some bigger fish to weigh but none came up.

We got into the weigh in and got in line. Lots of folks had fish today. Most of time you don't see a huge number of teams with their 15 fish but today there were 12 teams! We weighed in and had 5 lbs even and grabbed the top spot. However, that was short lived. Bobb-o weighed in at 5.8 lbs which ended up taking 3rd place for the day. The top weight was 7.2 lbs and our own MT took 2nd with 7 lbs! I'm not sure what place we ended up in, I want to say around 7th or 8th place.

We tried plastics early on and again later in the day. We only caught a couple on plastics though. The majority of our fish came off jigs tipped with Euro Larva. Trav had switched out jigs a few times and I can't remember what he was using. My go to for the day was a small, red diamond jig.

The highlight of the day was one of the teams showed up at weigh in with a this 16" crappie weighing in at 1.8 lbs!! I apologize for not remembering the fisherman's name but it was hog for sure!! Most impressive is that it came from a Metro Lake!!

[icebanger]

Sounds like a great day on the ice!!!!!

[lentz]

you guys did good
just had some smoked sun fish today from my grandpa 

[Baron Von Crappie]

great report!
sure was fun! I must have punished over 150 fish hehe