It was a solid, summer style week in the south-central basin of Lac Seul. The walleyes are back on the main lake. We have not seen the trend to deeper water yet, but most of our good walleye bites were near deep water. We caught a few walleyes in 35 ft., but the vast majority were caught in 20 – 28 ft.
The bite depended on the mood of the walleyes each day. We had a few days where Gulp at speed was the winner and we had many more where you had to find them with electronics and keep a live minnow in front of their face. I don’t mean to be repetitious, but we really do so much better as a crew by fishing the extremes. After an hour spent pulling big Gulp at speed and another hour spent dead sticking 1/4s or 1/8ths with minnows over arcs, then you are going to have a pretty good idea of how to spend the rest of your day.
Volume was good this week with guide sheets averaging 35 walleyes over 18 in. per boat per day. There were some faster days and there were some slower ones. The hard part of writing the fishing report is disconnecting my personal day of fishing on the last day with what happened for many of the guide boats for most of the week. I fished with my parents today and we had a nice day out, but the lake went flat after lunch under a blazing sun and we had a hard time getting lazy fish to bite. I spend time reviewing the guide sheets before I write the weekly report and I was pleasantly surprised by how many great guided days we had this week.
The totals – for the week we had 33 walleyes over 27 in., including 4 – 28s, 2 – 29s, and 1 – 30. Most of the big ones were caught one level deeper than the average bite. It was an even split between plastics at speed and dead sticking minnows with light jigs.
The surprise for the week was a tough, big pike bite. Several boats spent time chasing gators and the results were marginal at best. For the week, just 2 over 37 in. with one 39.
Missy, the kids, and Arya are back home in Iowa. School starts soon and football practice is already under way. The summer goes by so much faster when we are non-stop busy.
I did have some terrible news this week. The first guy to hire me as a guide in Northwest Ontario was John Grace, the owner of the Old Post and Village on Lake St. Joe. He died in a boating accident this past week. I hadn’t seen him in several years, but the tragedy of Wendy and the boys left behind is heart breaking. We didn’t always see eye to eye, but we had some great times. The news of his loss hit me harder than I expected. He was a huge part of how I began my professional career and I will always have great memories of him and my early years learning to guide on Lake St. Joe.
