We are losing almost three minutes of daylight every day, as the days grow shorter with fall approaching. The later the sun gets up, the more noticeable it becomes, especially for those who are accustomed to getting up early.
The roller coaster weather continues, with cold temperatures and high winds last weekend and the forecast for this weekend into next week predicting highs in the 80s.
Walleye fishing was just beginning to pick up in many lakes as surface water temperatures bottomed out in the mid 60s.
Surface water temperatures reflect the average between the daily highs and the daily lows, so surface water temperatures are on the rise again, at least in the short term.
It is already obvious that many of the summer visitors to the Bemidji area have gone back to their home towns. The weekends are still moderately busy on most of the larger lakes, but the public accesses usually only have a few cars during the week.
The late Labor Day weekend this year gives the Bemidji area two more weekends of summer. The unofficial beginning of fall starts the day after Labor Day, which is also the end of the summer tourist season.
A couple of cold nights and chilly days with high winds was enough to drive many of the minnows out of the shallows and they’re beginning to school up in deeper water, somewhere between the edge of the weeds and the top edge of the thermocline.
The thermocline is still visible on sonar in the deep lakes. The fish are unlikely to go deeper than the thermocline before it breaks down as the water temperatures cool down in the fall.
Anglers should be seeing plenty of baitfish on sonar if they are fishing in the right areas. The locations of the baitfish will change with the conditions, but anglers should be seeing something on sonar in the areas they are fishing.
Sometimes it’s not easy to separate the larger fish from the schools of baitfish. It is a good sign if the minnows are a couple of feet off the bottom, which is how it should be if there are larger predators working underneath the schools of baitfish.
Anglers may have noticed how many floating weeds there are on the surface of the water and along the shoreline.
The natural process for the vegetation in the lakes is to keep growing until they reach the surface, so the plants can be pollinated.
Then the seeds begin to form on the tops of the plants until the plants get so heavy the top of the plant gets broken off in strong winds like there was this last weekend.
The tops of the plants get blown around the lake by the wind, releasing some of the seeds in areas where they are able to settle and germinate next summer.
Once the tops of the weeds start to break off, the easier it is for anglers to fish through the broken weeds, especially for muskie anglers.
Perch fishing has been picking up in some of the larger lakes, with anglers having to sort through good numbers of smaller perch to get some keepers.
The lakes with the best potential for perch are usually the same lakes every year, even during down years. Leech Lake, Winnibigoshish, Cass and Bemidji all have fishable numbers of perch, even though the age classes of larger perch are down across the board.
Crappies and sunfish are schooling up in many of the smaller lakes, with some of the fish holding tight to the deep edge of the weeds. The rest of the fish have moved out to deeper water, suspending over the mid-depth range flats.
Anglers may have heard that this was the last year of the Kraus-Andersen Walleye Classic on Lake Bemidji. Volunteers put in more than 1,000 man hours per year to run the tournament and donated many thousands of dollars to local charities. Thanks for 15 years of service to the Bemidji community. It is unclear if anyone will step forward and take over running the tournament.
Nelson runs the Bemidji Area Lakes Guide Service. He can be contacted at
panelsonbemidji@gmail.com
