Minnesota Fishing Resort Pan Fishing

Over 40,000 acres, 1,200 miles of shoreline and 365 islands make Lake Vermilion a crappie, blue gill and sunfish fisherman's paradise.  Long renowned as one of Minnesota's best pan fishing lakes, Lake Vermilion offers trophy potential crappies, blue gills and sunfish.

Children and adults love to catch the numerous bluegill and crappie of Lake Vermilion. Crappie are easiest to catch in May, June and September. Bluegill are caught readily from May to September. Vermilion has been well known for its large bluegill for years. This year will offer more bluegill than ever. The long term average has been 30 bluegill per DNR test net. Recently 64.7 fish were caught per net! The most prevalent year classes in the the 2001 DNR test nets were 1997 and 1998 fish. Few of these fish will exceed 7 inches but there will be some large ones around from earlier years.

Statistics are not as detailed for crappie. Crappie populations appear to be cyclical in nature. 2002 should be an average year for crappie numbers. We have seen a number of very nice crappie recently but not many large catches of them.