Lake Carroll Fishing
* A couple of Lake Carroll walleye caught by Kevin Sewell.
Lake Carroll is a 636 acre lake that is contained within a 5,000 acre private lake home community in northwest Illinois. The lake has a gorgeous setting with plenty of trees and nice homes scattered along the 22 mile shoreline.
Like Apple Canyon Lake, you need to be a Lake Carroll property owner or a guest of a property owner to enjoy lake access. If you are fortunate enough to fish this lake, you will figure out that the lake has an outstanding fishery, especially for walleye.
There is an excellent ongoing walleye stocking program that helps make this one of the best walleye lakes in northern Illinois. You can catch good-sized walleye in the 18 to 24 inch range and there is an abundance of smaller walleye in the 12 to 16 inch range as well. On a trip last year, I was able to catch 9 walleye right off the back patio before we even got into our boat. Most of these fish were 14 to 18 inches long and I didn’t even fire up the motor yet. Pretty incredible for northern Illinois.
Once you are in the boat, you can just turn on the electric trolling motor and coast along the shorelines with live bait and you’ll do just fine here. With a drop-shot rig and a fathead minnow, you can expect to catch largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, walleye, white bass and crappie. Switch over to red-tailed chubs, creek chubs or golden roaches and you will definitely catch more walleye and you will run into bigger bass and possibly a northern pike or muskie.
The popular lures that are in most anglers’ tackle boxes will work here, but live bait can really increase your catch rate dramatically. There is plenty of shoreline to fish, although, it gets very deep very fast on most shorelines. A good locator will help a lot because many of the best spots are not obvious above water. You need to see what type of structure is down there to help you locate the best spots that hold schools of walleye, crappie, smallmouth bass and largemouth bass. There are quite a few spots on this lake where you can catch them in bunches, but it can take some time to find the best spots.
This lake is an excellent lake for fishing. If you are interested in fishing this lake, you may want to get more information on buying some Lake Carroll real estate. Here is the official Lake Carrol website with information on the lake, real estate, golfing, fishing and more. http://lakecarrollassociation.com
