“If you had to pick one week to spend here,” suggests Don Hudek, owner of Hudek’s resort on Red Lake, “it should be about the first week of May. The fishing is consistently good at that time of year. During a cold spring, May 1st represents the first really hot shallow bite. In warm years, it will be the middle of the spawning run. Either way, the weather’s usually getting nice by then.”

From ice-out through the spawn, slipbobbers, light jigs, and minnows are most popular on Red Lake, but Hudek fishes on bottom. “I like a floating jig and a minnow on a Lindy Rig.” This is basically a sliding sinker ahead of a 1- to 3-foot leader. “It’s more versatile,” Hudek says. “You can cast or drift to cover more water, and the fish are shallow (generally 4 to 8 feet), so they won’t be too far from bottom most days. Most of the areas the crappies use are pretty featureless, and weeds are rarely a problem early. A sudden 1- to 2-foot drop in the bottom is significant and can collect hundreds of crappies.” A minnow can be tail-hooked on a small floating jighead. When the rig is left to rest on bottom, the floating head holds the minnow up, struggling against the jig to reach bottom—a powerful trigger early on.

Just across the Canadian border, the window finally closes once and for all, but not until mid-June. People from down South are always shocked to find 2-pound crappies this far north, and Rainy Lake has a ton that size. Rainy Lake sprawls across the international border between Minnesota and Ontario. “It’s a pretty big window up here,” according to Barry Woods of Woody’s Fairly Reliable Guide Service. “It can happen in the first week of May or the first week of June. It all has to do with water temperature and weather. Water temperature is pretty warm when the crappies move in really shallow, right around 50°F. On Rainy, the first hot shallow bite can take place in pencil reeds or on shallow rockpiles. I look for them first along the north shore of shallow, weedy bays. If you can find steep, marshy banks with overhanging brush along those northern shorelines, that’s good. If you’ve got a proven rockpile, sit right on it. You might not see anything for several hours and suddenly, there they are. They seem to move in and move off several times over the course of the day.