An Early Start to Fall and a monster pike
With high temps in the 70s and overnight lows in the 50s, it feels like the beginning to the end of Summer. For the last 4 mornings in a row, there has been a light fog in the backs of the bays as the surface water temps begin to cool. You never know what the next few weeks will bring, but If I didn’t have a calendar, I would tell you that this was the first week of Fall.
Walleye fishing was a bit challenging again this week. We have a significant part of the walleye population in deep water (25 – 35 ft.) The issue is that we are also still finding some shallower groups of fish. To make things more complicated, there were many reports of walleyes caught on spoons while casting for pike. With the walleyes scattered, flat calm days made for a very tough bite. We still caught some big fish, but there were many reports of marking and not catching.
When the fish get stubborn, we constantly change presentations looking for the key for that day. It changes by day, by region, and sometimes by the hour as the weather changes. There were almost no fish caught pulling plastics at speed this week. Most guides were long lining 1/4s with minnows for scattered, semi-aggressive fish. There were many times that we had to slow down and fish vertically with 1/8s. And when they were obstinate, we geared down to drop shot rigs. The only way to win the guiding game this week was to constantly change presentations on an hourly basis.
For the week, we caught and released 30 walleyes over 27 in., including 10 – 28s. Volume was up and down, but we averaged 35 walleyes over 18 in. per boat per day.
Lake surface temps dropped back down into the low 70s this week and I think that helped our pike fishing results. Main lake weeds near deep water were still key and spoons were still the number one presentation, although there were some nice fish caught on blades (in-line spinners with double 6 or double 8 blades.)
For the week, we caught and released 14 pike over 37 in., including 2 – 38s, 3 – 39s, 3 – 40s, 1 – 41, and the biggest pike of the season caught and released by Brian Petersburg – a Monster 46 in. pike.
Many of the guides chase muskies at the far East end of Lac Seul on their days off, but every year we get a few more surprises closer to home. Evan Dammen caught a 38 in. musky just a few miles away from the lodge this week. Words cannot describe how excited he was. It was great for all of us to remember the absolute joy of an unexpected catch.
