Brainerd Fishing Report From Nate Berg

Info. via visitbrainerd.com

In this weeks Brainerd Minnesota fishing report local fishing guide Nate Berg shares his recent multi species success on areas lakes.

Typically by this time of the year, the fish are on their fall feeding pattern and easy to find.  One thing I found out in the past week is they are in more of a mid to late August pattern and spread all over the place due to the water still being in the upper 60's to lower 70's.  This made it a fairly weird week fishing wise.   One day, we caught walleyes on live bait rigs and redtails in the typical fall depths of 15-30 feet.  Just of some confusion, the next day we couldn't get a bite on a minnow and had to resort back to crawlers and move shallow. This is why as fishermen it is important to stay versatile and to not get stuck into ruts.
On Thursday, we headed out to one of my favorite fall lakes in the Brainerd Lakes Area looking for transitioned fish and we found them.  Not only did we find walleyes, but we also found a bunch of big largemouths and some pike.  The key was finding areas where the weed line ended at roughly 15 feet and had a fairly quick drop off to deeper water.  It really didn't matter if it was near a point or an inside turn as long as the weed line ended at 15 feet. 
Another important part of the day was being very mobile.  It seemed the fish would scatter quick when you started catching a few and I have found this to be fairly typical in the fall following a front. The only technique we fished was a live bait rig with a long snell and a 3-5 inch redtail.  In the end we had walleyes up to 25 inches, pike up to 26 inches bass up to 20 inches, and boated nearly 40 fish.
On Friday, I had to throw everything out the window that I learned from the day before.  We started fishing the same deep water edges and could not produce a fish with a redtail.  After about 20 minutes of seeing a few fish with no bites, I decided to lengthen the snell from 6 to 8 feet and use a full crawler with some air blown into it.  This technique produced a few good eater walleyes but it wasn't what we wanted.  If I can give you one piece of advice that can hold true all the way up to ice is to bring along some crawlers and a worm blower.  Many times a crawler will produce bites when a minnow will not.
As Friday progressed, one thing that we noticed was all the bass had moved shallower and were breaking the surface.  It just made sense for us to follow the progression.  Within a few minutes, we started to pull in crappies, bluegills, largemouth, pike and walleyes. The pattern was simple, any place there was weeds, there was fish.  The best depths were 7-10 feet and as is the case many times in the fall, blue blades were the key.  It didn't matter if it was a #4 or #5 blade, just as long as it was blue. The best speeds were 0.9 to 1.1 mph with an 1/8 oz. bullet weight above the harness to get down to the bottom.
As we got into a rhythm with the crawler harnesses, I decided to give another one of my favorite fall techniques a try and that is long lining jigs on the weed edge at the same time as pulling harnesses.   The key to long lining is using a really sensitive 7 foot or longer medium light rod, no stretch line and a 6 foot or longer 14-20 pound fluorocarbon leader.  The size of the jig always depends on how deep I am fishing.  My rule of thumb is anything above 15 feet I use a 1/16 oz jig, anything from 15-20 feet I use a 1/8 oz and 20 plus I use a 1/4 oz.  I have found that a plain lead jig head works the best but sometimes I will use a metallic colored jig, especially in tannin stained waters.  This technique produced a few fish as well. 
As the day went on, we moved back to some deeper structure and produced a few more walleyes including a couple on redtails.  We really had a lot of short hits from really nice fish.  They were absolutely hammering the minnows but dropping them nearly immediately.  This can be frustrating but what this tells me is the fish are ready to put their fall feed bag on and fishing should get really good within a few days, especially once the weather cools down.
In the end, we had walleyes up to 23 inches, many pike up to 24 inches, some very nice largemouth up to 19 inches, some great crappies up to 12 inches and some dandy gills up to 9 1/2 inches.  In total, I would guess we caught nearly 75 fish. With great weather forecasted for the weekend get up to the Brainerd area and hold on to summer with some fall fishing.
Nate Berg
Nate Berg Fishing Guides
218-821-9488