The 2025 fishing season started off with a huge bang. Ice came off the lake on May 5 and we immediately got to work on getting docks in the lake. We were very rushed because the first scheduled guests arrived on the 9th. That weekend the weather got hot, as in really hot. 92 degrees on Mother’s day! The bass went nuts and hit just about anything and everything. The crappie bite was also especially good. The walleye bite was okay. And of course, the pike were everywhere. The big heat wave only lasted 4 days, but we had to have all the cabins A/Cs going overtime during that weekend. In fact, we were just about the hottest place in the country that weekend!

We had 3 cabins in for opening weekend and all of them were so happy with the fishing conditions. Two cabins were here to fish for crappies and other species and one cabin only wanted to bass fish. The bass fishing pair came in early a couple of days because they were “worn out” from catching too many fish. One day in particular they boated 160 plus fish by 3 pm!!!

As soon as that heat wave finished the temps plummeted and the winds kicked in. Soon we were dealing with 30-40 mile an hour winds from the north and highs in the upper 40s. We even had some snow flurries. Fishing struggled for a couple of days and then picked up again. We had a serious walleye fishing couple staying in cabin 1 that week and they did really well for about 3 days. Then the winds slowed down and the mayflies started to hatch. Literally millions and millions of mayflies everywhere. The fish went nuts for the mayflies. Crappies were seen fishing in the shallows trying to gorge on the mayflies. Minnows on a slip bobber were extremely effective as well as beetle spins and small jigs with a small twister tail. The walleye bite really started to struggle and then the DNR released a million walleye fry into the lake. While I appreciate the stocking efforts by the DNR, the new fry were immediately gobbled up by bigger fish.

The success rate of stocked fry surviving is quite low. Probably somewhere between 2 and 3 percent. Sure,, in the end that means we will have 20 to 30 thousand survive. And that is a lot of fish. But still hundreds of thousands of fry were eaten that week. Which in turn meant the walleye weren’t hungry. So walleye fishing was very slow the last week of May. The bass bite remained good as well as the crappie bite. By June 1 we were starting to see bluegills being caught and a couple days later walleye started hitting again. Overall the bite has been good!

One significant problem has been forest fires. Hundreds of miles away, Canada is having major forest fire problems About once or twice a week we’ve had some pretty hazy days. Hopefully we get some rain soon.