You missed out on 15.5 inches of white work. Interstate closed from Osakis to Fargo for much of the morning. 40 mph winds and just not a pleasant day. Snowmobiles on the trail today!! Its melting fast this afternoon, but there will be some drifts awaiting your arrival next weekend!! Keep warm and dry in St Boni! Brent

Hey - did anyone fish Pelican for opener? Hope it is better year for us all than last year. We will be going up this coming Friday through Sunday, staying at Ashby Resort. Hopefully fishing Pelican all days, if we can eek out a bite or two...

Will have a green and tan alumacraft with 150merc on one boat, and an old tan alumacraft 16' with 50merc on other. If you fell like yappin, stop on by.

This will be the first year without our hunting and fishing buddy Jim, who died in January. He brought our Dad to the area about 40 or so years ago, and we have been going up there now for about 30. There'll be a few Pelican and Jim stories going around that's for sure

I was out all day Sat & a few hours Sun. You did not miss much. It was the worst fishing I've ever had on the lake. I got one Northern. That's it. The neighbors got 3 Walleyes after fishing all dsy Sat & all day Sun. I saw a few Walleyes being landed, but most boats I saw were not exactly swinging the net around.

I am a defeated man!

Ditto for me. JJ pretty much summed it up. Opener was much slower than normal on that particular lake. We fished until 10:00am Sat with only a couple northerns and perch to show for it. I spent the next few hours just running around graphing structure preparing for the coming weeks. We bailed just in time to miss the snow.
We didn't witness a walleye caught. One guy reached for the net once but then put it down. That's about all the excitement we had all day.

Be careful out there this weekend everyone. It's going to be blowing hard. We decided to stay home since the lake will be so rough.

How was it this past weekend? Did the action pick up or is it still slow?

We were there Friday until Monday morn, but did not fish Monday. The wind was dead until about 10 am or so (as usual) but then really huffed and puffed (again like usual for there ).

We only caught 4 walleyes, and one was from Clear Lake. We did catch a few 14" crappies by the arches, right at dark. Also got some pike from about 26" to 30", and some smaller ones. We were able to clean enough fish for a fish fry, and my buddy brought a couple crappies and a walleye home.

We also tried Ten Mile, and only thing biting was a dozen or so smallmouth, with a nice 18.5" fish! (I know, before season, but we were using lindy rigs and shiners.)

Pelican was a dead sea for us, basically, on the walleye front. The carp shooters did great! They were getting drums full of them, having a good time! My bro even put on some corn and ending up catching a bunch of carp, and those spawning things sure messed up the boat! But a good time the whole weekend! Sun the whole time! Great time. I might not make it up again until duck season, we will see how it goes.

Good luck!

Nice job. I was a defeated man again this weekend (justy a few pike). I think I lost my mojo! What are the arches? e-mail me offline @ jjohnson5150 at yahoo dot com if you would like to share. My wife attended the assoc meeting Sat AM. I'd be happy to pass along the info to those who were unable to go.

All Quiet on the western front.

JJ, sent you email. I should have said little arches, which (I think) is what they call the inflow from Christina, and the Arches is the outlet to Melby lake. Or maybe I have that backwards... but we were by the Christina inlet.

I'd be interested to here what the assoc. was saying, even though I am not part of it. Thanks.

Highlights from the assoc meeting:

1)A few landowners are still holding out on selling the land to the county. As a result, the highway 19 project is stalled.

2)The Crappie kill last summer did not do as much damage as originally thought. Apparently, Crappie fishing was decent this past winter. The DNR thinks the general population is fine & will rebound to prior levels with a few good spawning years.

3)The water quality is never going to get clear. Since Pelican is a prairie lake, the run off is going to cloud the water & compete against the better water coming in from Christina.

The water quality seems really bad this year.

My Dad caught a 2lb Crappie 2 weeks ago, but I still can not locate any schools of them. 1 here - 1 there is all.

Indian Mounds resort has changed hands. The new owners closed the deal on Mon June 9th. I think it's a younger couple.

Overall, I am having the toughest year of fishing I have ever had on Pelican. Perhaps the dirty water & weather has something to do with it.

Advice for this defeated man would be appreciated.

What a weekend.

Walleyes & Pike were very active when the sun was high in the sky.

I caught more Walleyes this weekend than I have in the past year.

The fish appeared to be from 3 different year classes.

Crankbaits & spinner / leech combo's both worked out.

Good to hear you had good luck JJ!

There were just some Ashby-ites that came down here, as my Dad passed away last week. We had a picture of him on the "funeral home card/handout" from last year, with a nice big sunfish in one hand, a big thumbs up on the other hand, and a huge smile on his face. He loved Pelican.

Glad to hear that while he was moving to the next place, one of his favorite lakes was on fire with action

Sorry to hear about your Dad. I heard about the sad news on the radio. They were saying how much he loved the area & even played an audio sample. His memorial card was posted at Dahlen's this weekend.

Take care.

Good to hear you had some luck, how low is the water? We haven't had spit for rain, other than one big shot of 2+ inches. They started working on CR 19 too, are they still planning on tarring this year or is it just a gravel upgrade, until they get all of the sidehill work done?