“This is Jason Durham with Go Fish! Guide Service and we’re talking fishing here in the Park Rapids area. I tell you what, for August the fishing has been pretty darn good. If you’re looking for walleyes gravitate out to that deep water. Some of these schools of bait fish are moving out into deeper water – we’re talking suspended over 50-60 feet of water with maybe like 30 feet down so now is the time to use deep diving crank baits. Some anglers are using lead-core line, braided line to get that bait really deep down there…but it creates a conundrum too because we don’t really want to target fish too deep because if you do then they’re going to experience barotrauma when you bring them up. It’s kind of like the bends with humans when they go diving. We don’t want to harm every fish that we catch, we still want to release some of those fish that are too small and those trophy fish that we want to give to somebody else an opportunity to catch. The largemouth bass right now have been going absolutely bananas – what a great time to come here and fish largemouth bass! If you like to fish with frogs it’s a really great time to be here. Smallmouth bass have been a little bit more finicky but you know what they’re still available, they’re still here and in August that’s when they really start to get active so it’s a great time to fish for them. Some big northern pike have been caught this week, again targeting that deeper water is a really good way to go about it. Use live bait like a big minnow or a big sucker minnow if you can find them. Our bait shops here have had them, a lot of the state hasn’t but here in Park Rapids you can easily get that live bait. Muskie anglers have been doing well, and those fish have started to get a lot more active. We’re starting to see those fish come up in shallow water, try fishing right in the pencil reeds and just beyond and the top water bite right now for muskies is a great thing for August. Panfish, sunfish, crawpies…we’re actually seeing them a little bit shallower than we typically do this time of year. Usually they’re out in that 16-20 feet of water, but we’re actually getting a lot of fish up in the 9-10 feet of water right now. We’ve always got fish biting here in Park Rapids but right now, even though it’s August, the fish have been biting really well. So come on over to Park Rapids, visit us, stop downtown and see our shops, go catch some live music, and go catch some fish!”