Leech Lake — Let the Sun Get Up, Then Go Look Deeper for Crappies

My fall fishing plan has always been simple: be on the water before the sun, freeze my fingers into little pretzels, and then catch my first fish around lunch. This week’s Leech note basically says the pretzel part was optional.

Leech Lake Tourism posted Gill’s Oct. 8 weekly this morning. A lot of it is the same steady fall story we’ve been passing along. Four things moved, though, so we’ll start there.

What changed this week

1. You can sleep in a little. Gill’s tip: after a front rolls through, or on a frosty morning, walleyes tend to be late risers. Wait them out. When they finally start eating, that bite often holds into the afternoon. Last week the advice was not to skip midday. This week it’s closer to: don’t panic if the first hour is quiet. That works out great for anybody whose thermos takes longer to wake up than the fish do.

2. Try the shallower rock. His starting spots haven’t changed: rock and points with wind on them, 10–15 feet, with the Annex and Bear and Goose islands still the reliable names. What’s new is a nudge to poke around shallower rock too, because walleyes are trailing the baitfish up there.

3. The crappies are heading out. Gill singles out crappies as one of the best things going on the lake right now. His expectation is that cooling water pushes them out deeper, where they’ll hang suspended in the middle of the water column. So when the weedline stops producing, start reading the graph a bit farther out. On Oct. 1, crappies were doing their best work late in the day around the leftover weeds, so this is a real shift.

4. Perch, by the weedline. Perch are along the weeds in roughly 5–9 feet, and he says keepers are plentiful. That lines up nicely with the 5–8 feet in yesterday’s Pioneer-based card. That’s the kind of sentence that gets a Friday fish fry penciled onto a church basement calendar.

The walleye tackle box, slightly edited

Jigs with minnows are still the go-to, and his packing list specifically says fatheads. When you need to cover ground, he lists cranks or a live-bait rig. Crawlers, which shared top billing on the Oct. 1 note, aren’t mentioned this week. Our read (and it’s only a read): with colder water, minnows are taking over. That’s not a crawler ban, just a ranking. And if perch are around, the reeds still deserve a pass.

Same as last week

• Muskies: bucktails over shallow rock and along the weedline, plus big rubber baits rolled slowly for the largest fish. Fewer boats means more room to cast without an audience.
• Pike: spoons and spinnerbaits wherever the wind is pushing into the weeds.
• Bluegills and bass: whatever healthy green weeds are left. Bluegills don’t need deep water to be happy.

How this fits with the last two cards

Our Oct. 7 card came from a different source, the Bemidji Pioneer’s weekly column. It had walleyes in 9 to 12 feet at Trader’s Bay and GrandVu Flats, with perch north of Walker Narrows. That column also asked anglers to quit a deep crappie spot once they have a meal or a limit, because fish pulled from deep water rarely survive being released. With today’s note saying crappies are headed deep, that request is worth keeping in mind. Our Oct. 2 card has the earlier “don’t skip midday” tourism advice.

The best part of this week’s note isn’t a depth or a bait. It’s that the lake is getting quiet. October on Leech, with the shorelines turning colors and fewer trailers at the landing, is a good time to remember why we go out at all.

Fine print

This is one weekly tourism report for a lake that takes up a big piece of the map. It gives no water temps, counts, or sizes, and we didn’t add any. Confirm current MN DNR regs before harvest.

Sources

• Leech Lake Fishing Report — October 8, 2026, Leech Lake Tourism Bureau / Gill
• For comparison: Leech Lake Fishing Report — October 1, 2026, Leech Lake Tourism Bureau / Gill
• Prior cards: Leech Lake — Trader’s Bay to GrandVu, Nine to Twelve and Leech Lake — October Midday, Rocks Still Leading