This is our final fishing report of 2025, and it was a week of beautiful weather for late September here in the north! We had mostly sunny, warm days with light winds, that meant lots of very pleasant days on the water. In general, this stable weather brought the walleyes back to summer style locations and trends, and we spent most of our time targeting fish in deep water with live bait.
We averaged just 3 boats on the water per day for the last 10 days, for a total of 30 guided days. And for the first time this fall we had some boats devoting most of their time to pursuing big pike. Out of our 30 guided days, about 10 of them were spent pursuing big pike this week, while 20 were devoted to walleye.
For the walleye, more predictability from the weather meant fairly good numbers being caught. Our 20 guided days of walleye fishing averaged 31 walleyes over 18 inches per day, and the highest total for one day was 71 walleyes over 18 inches. We caught and released nine walleyes over 27 inches with four over 28 inches.
The big northerns we caught were mostly found in the remaining weed-beds, probably due to the gentler weather, and they took some searching. A boat usually had to visit many spots to contact a big fish, but success came for those willing to put the time in. For the week we boated 9 northerns over 37 inches, including two 40 inchers, and a 42 incher.
An interesting trend from the last few falls continued this week. Some boats had success fishing for Smallmouth again this fall. We boated 5 over 19 inches, with two 20 inchers. We’ve seen a steady increase in numbers and size of bass being caught in the last few weeks of season for a few years now. The warm, stable weather this past week caused a surge in smallmouth that had a few of our guides eager to chase them! We’re looking forward to seeing if this trend continues again next fall.
It’s my final report of 2025 and I always look back on the season as it comes to an end. In my boat, one of the things that stood out the most was the number of big walleyes we caught fishing new spots. In contrast to most other years, over half of the biggest fish in my boat this year came from spots entirely new to us.
One of the important factors that made this possible was days of consistent winds from same direction. By late spring, my boat had contacted big fish in new spots with this weather pattern often. It was enough times that for the rest of the season any time we experienced steady winds from the same direction for 3 or 4 days in a row, my preference, even over fishing our best and most productive spots from past seasons, was to go looking for new or unusual spots to check out. We mostly did our searching with gulp and speed; the answer was to keep moving fast and keep checking more places. As long as we had enough faith to keep this up, we connected with big fish regularly.
As a long time guide on Lac Seul, every season brings something interesting. Connecting with big walleyes on new structures was one really fun and interesting part of this season. This is what keeps me looking forward to a chance to try it all again next year! Hope to see you all searching for big fish with us at ‘The Wheel’ next year!
Brett McCallum
