How did the opener go for guys?

Hello to all, Fishing has been GREAT. Lots and Lots and Lots of nice fish are being caught between 18-26 in. The slot limit is really showing dividends. Slot fish have been tough to come by, but people are having a blast catching beutiful healthy Kabetogama walleyes. The fish are up in shallow water because of cold water temps. I fishing off the dock last night and caught 10 that were over 18inches in about an hour. Slip bobbers or jigs tipped with a minnow in shallow water will produce. Please remember that if you gut hook a fish please just cut the line and release. This will benefit us all. Hope everyone is having a safe and productive opening weekend. Good fishing to all.

This may sound like a dumb question.
Is Kabetogama ice free???

Dockboy, care to repost the slot for a reminder to those who aren't up there daily?

Sounds like it should be a fun fathers day weekend trip!

Kab. has been ice free since last Thurs., actually Kab used to have a harvest slot, now they have a protective slot, you must release all walleyes immediately between the length of 17" and 28". note you can't keep a 17" walleye.
Sauger count in the aggregate limit, but there are no slot restrictions for sauger. The limit for walleye and sauger combined is six, of which not more than four can be walleye.

OPENER: Weather was terrible, fishing and catching was great in Kab, and Namakan, can't speak for Crane. In general, the waters less than 12'produced primarily larger eyes over the 17" harvest size. Deeper depths between 28-34' produced smaller harvest size eyes.
Jig and minnow was the best offering by far, pitch small jigs in the shallows, heavy jigs for the deeper waters.
Northern bite was great, the pike were taking walleye offerings at all depths.
It would seem next week could be great, the smaller males should be in doing there job. guts

Opener was great (even if I spent sat on the porch next to the wood stove) I did get a few nice 'eyes right off the dock. Sunday was a whole new day. I took off around 8:00 to fish. Got every thing ready and when I reached into the bait bucket...nothing! OTTERS!!! So I went back to the dock and drove back to the Gateway store and bought more minnows. (otters grrrr)
I finally got fishing with a little 1/8 oz jig and a small fathead. I moved around a bit and finaly found a spot on a spot so I went back to the resort and got the wife. Long and short we put over a dozen fish in the trough between 20 and 25 inches in about 2 hours. She had a blast! I did too, but heck, I love just being out on a day like sunday.

ODL

Overdalimit...
Glad to hear you had some luck over opener.. Also glad to hear that you were catching a few of the dock.. We always enjoy sitting on the dock at Pine Tree enjoying a few cocktails and catching a few eyes....We will be there from 16th thru the 20th.. Anything happening in Tom Cod that you have heard?

do you think the spawn will continue till memorial weekend? the females will probably be moved out but dont the males hang around for a while?
im guessing the fish in sand point and east namakan are behaving in a similar fashion.
your thoughts guts?

Local did a fly-over Sunday - 75 total boats on Kab - most on the north shore in "some kinda long bay." Hmmmm...pretty vague but he's not a Kab guy...more Rainy guy looking at all the ice Kab doesn't have!

Do you all have the new Navionics map, available at Gateway Store? Awesome!

Also, make sure your resort is in on the Kab/Ash Fishing contest. Your photo will be on the WORLD WIDE WEB and possibly in the local weekly paper!

Great opener...get up here! The fish are biting!

LIS

hop sing, males and females both hang on the shallow side for some time after spawn, especially while the water stays cool.
This is a weird year, damm global warming, but timing wise a would suspect strong Spring like conditions, both temp and fish locations. guts

Fish acting like strong spring for sure -- in the water.

Out of water, I'd call it more of 'what spring' conditions.

Hop sing, heard of some folk running down into junction over the weekend with success. No word north and east of namakan island. No real reason to go that far yet. Until this rain last night, I would have strongly still considered ice out there on that part of the lake anyway but at least it wasn't snow.

Fishinz4me,
I will be up around 8:30 friday pm. I plan on working the shallows on the west end of the lake. Also the south shore has been getting better and better the last few years so I plan on working it some too. Of course one needs to keep the everpresnt wind in mind too. I am really hoping for some keeper size fish this weekend. Don't get me wrong I had a blast doing the CNR thing last weekend but pictures don't fry up too well. The wife and I are hoping to have enough fish for a small fry by the 4th of July and so far we have only 1 fish in the freezer. Oh yeah the dark bronze, black, red jig from Gatway General Store was my favorite last weekend. ODL

Overdalimit..
Thanks for the info.. We will be pulling in around noon on Friday and staying in Cabin 3 as usual... Hopefully by the time you get there we will have a few in the livewell ...
We will look for ya...

A.J.

We had a great opener. Not many boats but lots of fish. It's very hard to wish for smaller fish but that's what we did. Saturday was not a very good day, off and on rain and snow am, then after lunch and drying out clothes and gloves it rained solid, with some sleet mixed in. We got lots of fish but nothing in the slot. Sunday was clear and still little to no boats in our area, lots more fish and ended up just short of our limit to take home. It was a great weekend if you could take the weather. Glad we had a cabin with a good heater.