Vivian Lake Fishing Guide, Lake County, Minnesota

• Overview

  You will find Vivian Lake in Lake County, Minnesota. The surface lies 1,699 feet up. At 11 acres it is the sort of place you fish for an evening rather than a day. On size it sits at the modest end of our Lake County list. 28 miles away sits Silver Bay, the nearest town. Thunder Bay sits 98 miles out, and it is the nearest city worth the name. The nearest edge is a long way off, so local rules apply throughout.

• Where to Fish on Vivian Lake

  No chart reached our records; the first cast is your sounding. Read the surface for the wind lane, then fish the edge of it. Still water like this holds fish on the edges rather than out in the open. Open biodiversity records for Lake County list white sucker, yellow perch, northern pike and rainbow trout. Those are county-wide records, so not every one of them will be in this water. Vivian Lake responds to conditions more than to tactics.

• Seasonal Patterns

  July is the warm end of the year here, averaging about 64°F, while January sits near 5°F. Fishing here follows the temperature more than the calendar. Ice fishing carries the winter, and the water opens about late April. The open-water window runs from around late April to about late November in an average year. Right after break-up, and again as the nights sharpen, is when to go. That is the shape of the year on Vivian Lake.

• Tackle & Baits

  The rules here are undocumented as far as public sources go. No car park, ramp or path is recorded within easy reach of the shore. A small crankbait along the drop and a worm in the thick stuff cover the bass. Some banks are open only from a marked point. Barbless rules turn up on managed water more often than not. Should this one be busy, Gertrude Lake is 0.2 miles off. What applies at Vivian Lake may have changed since it was mapped.