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Posts: 202
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota | I am planning on making a trip or two down to iowa before the minnesota season opens up. I was planning on late March-early April depending how warm it is and than maybe another post spawn in may. I know most people go to clear lake but brushy creek looks much more interesting to fish and looks like it has good stocking numbers. Brushy creek was also the place I caught my first musky actually targeting them back when I was in college. Outside of southern Shad water like Kentucky/Tennessee there doesn’t seem to be much of any info on targeting pre spawn fish. Brushy creek is under 1k acres, lots of standing timber, steep breaks on the dam side of the lake and much shallower on the north side where the two creeks dump in. Anyone have experience on the various smaller iowa fisheries? Only things I have heard is that it’s generally quite hard to get on a bite that early. Any info would help thanks |
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Posts: 89
| Personally I stick with clear prespawn, your going to find about the same size fish hugging shorelines (30 to 38) inch males (mostly) in all your options. I just tend to contact far more fish prespawn on clear, soon as it becomes spawn/post i prefer brushy/big creek/mcbride, but I also switch to open water at that point (trolling headlocks/depthraiders/kinchow minnows during lulls, casting swimbaits during moontimes) Musky mayhems new fishing show went down to clear when there was ice still on parts of the lake and did pretty well, even smacked one on blades. They are there on all your options and I contact bigger fish on brushy/mcbride/big creek but it feels like more work for less results on average prespawn.
Colin |
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Posts: 1
| Hi Colin,
Have you had luck on Big Creek post-spawn? I know a lot of fish have been lost into Sailorville and downstream in the past. Perhaps the population has recovered? |
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Posts: 89
| Better late than never,
Been a fish gate on the dam, the fish are staying in the lake. My boat is in on service and I took a new job so my spring has been slow wont make it out for another week myself. Friends who have been have said Small ones are eating and big ones are super lazy. I don't have any info since the big warm up but I assume it has only gotten better. You tubers are tearing it up on pleasent and Mcbride, im sure brushy, big creek, and clear are all rocking now.
Good luck |
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Posts: 202
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota | I made it down to brushy first weekend of may and I was surprised with how many fish I saw, nothing in the boat. Each day I had one really hot follow from fish in the mid 40’s. First day the hot follow was on an 8” slammer next day it was on an XL beaver. Had a few lazy follows on glides and then saw probably 10 fish come up on livescope to follow a mag dawg or xl beaver out of 15-20 fow. Really cool lake, I only fished the two creek inlet bays and really didn’t target wood specifically much. Both bigger fish came out of 15 feet in the creek channel, small follows were up shallow. Probably should have tried throwing some smaller baits maybe I would have gotten one of the smaller ones to commit, think the smallest thing I threw was a 7.5” phantom |
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