 |
| Babe
and a few crappies from Upper Red Lake in
northern Minnesota. |
(Airs
the weeks of January 1st – 7th and
April 2nd– 8th)
Extreme conditions...heavy
clothes…frost on the beard...a brisk ride
on an atv…and a warm, portable fish house.
To outsiders looking in, all this for the sake
of hopefully yanking fish through a hole on a
frozen lake may seem a little out there. But
to anglers of all ages who live in the north,
nothing could be more natural.
Still think
it all seems a bit odd?
Then perhaps you can appreciate
ice fishing purely as a therapeutic—a
means for helping people mentally survive
long, cold
winters and the very real phenomenon known
as cabin fever.
The only real cure is a prescription
for relief is getting out of doors…staying
active…and having fun. So why stay
cooped up inside all winter, allowing claustrophobia
to get the best of you, when celebrating
winter
out on the ice with family and friends is
such a blast?
A recent case in point is last
winter’s
last-ice outing to Red Lake, in northern
Minnesota, with my good friend and fishing
partner, Jerry
James.
For those of you that don't
know, why
don’t
I briefly re-tell the story of how Red Lake’s
amazing trophy crappie fishery came to
be. In a nutshell,
due to the
demise of walleye populations, after many
years of unrestricted commercial harvesting
by local
natives…Red Lake’s food balance
got all out of whack.
By seven or eight years
ago, crappies
had already claimed the open niche in the
food chain and boy oh boy… did their
populations explode! As did the number
of ice fishermen who
began coming to Red Lake to capitalize
on slab-sized crappies--the likes of which
most
had never seen
in both size and abundance.
But bringing
us back to present, the crappie frenzy
still rages on.
In spite of the fact that hundreds of thousands
of crappies are being harvested each year.
Amazingly, it’s with literally no consequence
to the over-all fisheries management plan
in place for
Red Lake.
You see, even from the beginning
of the crappie boom, DNR managers have
been working
towards returning the lake to its original
natural balance. Basically, that means
focusing on restoring
walleye by stocking and allowing them to
reclaim Red Lake’s habitat and forage
base.
In turn…and once again,
by design…crappie
numbers are projected to fall until equilibrium
is achieved and walleyes rule supreme
in Red Lake. So in the end, I guess there’s
no way for both species and anglers with
a specific
preference to have their cake and eat it
too. For now…each walleye caught
on Red Lake must be released by law. But
this week on “Good
Fishing”, you’ll
see there’s clearly no harm getting
in on some of the world’s finest
winter crappie action while the getting’s
still good.
As I’ve said, ice fishing
is a sure-fire cure for cabin fever and it takes
more than a
little cold weather to scare a good Minnesotan
off. But in the other
segment of today's show…what about when
rain…a
radical drop in temperature…wind comes
between one Minnesotan and a good ole’ southern
boy’s plans to go bass fishing during mid-summer?
Make sure you tune in to get the low-down on
cold front largemouth in the middle of summer.
|
