Pollywog Lake in Cass County: How and When to Fish It

• Overview

  Pollywog Lake sits within Cass County in Minnesota. The water sits 1,368 feet up. Surface area runs to about 21 acres — small enough to read in one session. Supplies mean a trip to Crosslake, 26 miles off. The nearest city of size is Fargo, 118 miles away. Within easy reach: Silver Lake lies 0.5 miles on, Hazel Lake after 0.7 miles, Spearns Lake lies 0.8 miles on, Little Silver Lake after 0.8 miles and Mud Lake lies 1.1 miles on. It sits well inside the county, so one set of rules covers it.

• Where to Fish on Pollywog Lake

  No chart reached our records; the first cast is your sounding. The productive water is a rod length or two out, not a hundred. Look for the band where the shallows give up and the bottom falls away. Open biodiversity records for Cass County list largemouth bass, yellow perch and bluegill. It is the county picture; the agency list is water-specific. On Pollywog Lake the first feature you find is usually worth a session.

• Seasonal Patterns

  Seasonal averages run from 6°F in January up to 68°F in July. Winter closes the water for a while, and the reopening is worth catching. Winter fishing happens on the ice here, with open water back around mid April. Averages suggest open water from about mid April through to roughly late November. The strong weeks are the first after break-up and the last before the freeze. Anyone fishing Pollywog Lake regularly works to that calendar.

• Tackle & Baits

  Whether you may fish here is not something records settle. We find no slipway, car park or made path within a short radius, so treat access as rough. For the bass here, soft plastics worked slow along cover and a spinnerbait for searching do most of the work. Gates get locked out of season on water like this. A polite question at the farm gate opens more banks than anything else. For a change of water, Silver Lake is 0.5 miles distant. Nothing here settles the position at Pollywog Lake for certain.