Early September Ely area fishing

[greatoutdoors]

Fishing still remains slow on all lakes in the Ely area, and they appear to be scattered from 3 to 20+ FOW.
Surface temps vary in lakes from 70-74 degrees surface.  Burntside Lake was at 67 degrees in 20 FOW a few days ago.
Smaller bait is working the best, as the fish are biting extremely lightly and must be given ample time before setting the hook.
There are many fish visible with an underwater camera in 12-20 feet, but barely move when you drop it down.
The last two weeks have been very warm and calm.  This will begin to change today, as the wind is going to pick up, and temps are expected to rapidly drop for the next several days.
This will cool the surface temps and hopefully make the fish more active.

[wallyhntr1]

Hi Jim,

Nice meeting you last week & your crawlers did the job!

We ended up doing fairly well on Birch & caught them by going against what everyone was saying... We used 3/8oz bottom bouncers pulling 2 hook, 6ft snells with 2 floats/spinner and a whole crawler, speed was right at .9 to 1.1 & they hammered it- 12-14ft was the ticket for us-  44 eyes, 8 big crappies & 2 jumbo perch, all on the bouncers/crawlers...   Couple of the days we were fishing in the smoke from the forest fire, kind of spooky...   

[greatoutdoors]

Glad to hear that someone has done okay!!
Most reports are slow to none, dang fish!

[wallyhntr1]

I am surprised to hear the reports are that slow... we have fished Birch 3 times previous to last weeks trip & each time it was very slow, last week was by far our best on that lake.. Found about a mile long stretch of the river where we would go down & back, very close to shore pulling those spinners/crawlers.. we were right on the top shelf of the transition where it was a little rocky/structure- 12-14ft of water... if we went just a little bit further out from shore it dropped into the river basin where there was nothing...