With the Minnesota fishing opener this Saturday for walleye, northern pike, bass and trout, anglers of all ages are looking forward to trekking to the docks, shores or getting out in their boats.

While up North is hyped up every spring as the place to be for fishing, there are also several hot spots to fish in southern Minnesota.

A fishing outlook report provided by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MNDNR) said that based on recent netting surveys that evaluate the fish population, Big Swan Lake and Minnie-Belle Lake in Meeker County by Hutchinson will represent two top-10 waters for walleye fishing this spring. Lake Washington in Le Sueur County by Mankato is another favorite spot for walleye fishing. Last year, Belle and Collinwood were the top lakes in the area for walleye.

R&R Bait and Tackle has been located at 1405 North Broadway Street in New Ulm the past 29 years. Its owner Francis Rieger said crappie fishing is currently high on everyone’s list.

“Everybody right now is fishing crappies, like in Lake Washington, they’re getting a lot of 12-13 inch crappies down there,” Rieger said. “And Lake Hanska, they’re getting a few crappies, not a big amount, but a lot of catfish [laughs]. Sleepy Eye’s getting a few crappies, a guy said he even had a couple northerns he had to throw back in. But the river, if it comes down a little bit more, some are even going to hit the river.”

For pan fish, Minnie-Belle is another projected hot spot, with some of the larger sunfish and crappies in southern Minnesota. There is a five-sunfish bag limit at Minnie-Belle, however, in order to increase the number of quality sunfish anglers catch.

As for Saturday, Rieger said he expects Lake Hanska to be a high-traffic area for fishing.

“Saturday, I’m pretty sure they’re going to hit Hanska pretty heavy, and they’ll probably hit the river, and there’s other lakes everybody is going to right now. They’re all talking about different lakes up north.”

With the rough winter and blanket of snow covering lakes, there was reduced sunlight penetration and oxygen production that is essential for fish survival. The MNDNR said the results later panned out to be not as severe as initially thought after ice-out observations in the middle of April. While there was a natural fish winter kill on several shallow lakes observed, it was only observed to be a partial kill, with the most pronounced loss being common carp and buffalo fish.

“There’s a lot of lakes that had a kill-off this year, quite a bit,” Rieger said. “You can go to Clear Lake out here, you can go to Lake Crystal, you can go to Long Lake — they had an algae bloom and that killed 4,000 crappies off. But there’s a lot of walleyes in St. James, believe it or not. A guy said during the winter that he put a camera down and it was just solid full of them but they wouldn’t bite. … There probably was not enough air in there at the time. That’s got a lot to do with it.”

Rieger said he’s sold a lot of crappie bait and fathead minnows so far.

“Crappies and fatheads mostly, and then a lot of nightcrawlers because people are going bullhead fishing, too, that’s the main thing right now,” Rieger said. “I’ve got a lot of leeches coming in, they’ll be going after leeches. That’s going to be a hot one, everybody wants leeches in the beginning.”

The 75th Minnesota Governor’s Fishing Opener will be hosted in Mankato, starting Thursday through Saturday.