The change continues:
Last week’s weather featured a series of rainy fronts that moved through the area. The days are shorter, the nights are cooler, the air is a bit more crisp, and we are just starting to see the first bit of color in the leaves on the trees directly on the shoreline. In short, Fall is on the way.
The ups and downs in the walleye fishing bite mirrored the changes in the weather. Post frontal days with no wind were tough bites. The fish may have been biting during the fronts, but the wind and rain made it tougher to fish the main lake spots that were holding fish. The biggest change for the walleye bite was a move to deeper water. Almost all of our fish were caught from water 30 ft. or deeper this past week. We still used the full spectrum of presentations and speeds. All worked at times, but none worked all of the time. For consistently good results, you had to change presentations multiple times a day. From the nightly round table reports, I will tell you that there were more big walleyes caught fishing slow and vertical with drop shots than there were pulling ¾ oz. jigs with big Gulp at speed.
For the week, we caught and released 36 walleyes over 27 in., including 11 – 28s, and 3 – 29s. Volume changed by the day, but we still averaged 35 walleyes over 18 in. per boat per day.
There was very little time spent chasing pike this past week and the results reflect it. The weedbeds are beginning to break up and we did have some nice fish caught off of wind blown rock. This pattern is fairly typical for the beginning of Fall. As the water temps cool, I expect that we will see more time spent casting spoons for big pike. For the week, we caught and released 7 over 37 in., including 3 – 38s. If you were looking for more evidence of the seasonal change, we began to catch smallmouth bass this week while casting for pike, including 3 over 19 in.
It always surprises me, but this report will be my final entry for the 2025 season. The older I get, the faster the seasons go.
Until next year,
MW
