Glen Schmitt

By itself, Rice County’s Cannon Lake is 1,593 acres in size. Combine it with Wells Lake, which boaters can access from Cannon beneath the Highway 12 bridge, and you’ve got more than 2,200 acres of water to fish. That’s a pretty good-sized fishery for these part of southern Minnesota.

Like so many lakes in the Longville area, 1,226-acre Wabedo Lake is an excellent multi-species lake. Panfish, northern pike, and largemouth bass are all caught here with some consistency, but its muskies, walleyes, and smallmouth bass usually garner the most angling attention.

At first glance, it might appear as though anglers who fish Trout Lake near Coleraine have their work cut out for them. The lake is large (nearly 2,000 acres), with quite a bit of midlake structure and an abundance of sharp shoreline breaks.

You typically don’t hear a lot about East Battle Lake in Otter Tail County, but it’s not because this 1,978-acre system is not a good fishing lake. East Battle just kind of gets lost in the shuffle in an area that’s rich in exceptional, fish-producing lakes that cover the gamut of fish species.

There aren’t many other fishing options near Prairie Lake in St. Louis County. Located about 17 miles south of Floodwood, Prairie is a 794-acre fishery that mostly sits all by itself, kind of in the middle of nowhere.