The weather this week went from warm and windless for most of the week, to cold and high wind in the last couple of days. A three-day front blew through to finish the week, and the walleyes were acting like it is fall.
The walleyes were in summer patterns for a long while during the warm stable weather, and our boats spent most of their time in 30+ feet using live bait and finesse presentations. However, it’s worth mentioning that our two biggest walleyes of the week were caught at speed with big plastics on a flat, calm, hot and sunny, day – even in adverse conditions there were still some active fish willing to strike an aggressive presentation. The fish moved shallower quickly when the front began, and most of our effort for the last few days was devoted to water less than 25 feet deep, and big fish were produced as shallow as 15 feet.
We averaged just 6 boats on the water per day this week, and we had a total of 44 guided days. For the week we caught and released 15 walleyes over 27 inches, with five 28 inchers, and 3 over 29 inches. Finesse bites early in the week and windy days late in the week meant our total numbers dipped, our guides recorded an average of 29 walleyes over 18 inches per boat per day this week.
This week we boated just 5 northerns over 37 inches, two of which were over 41 inches, the biggest a 41.5 incher. The big fish answered to blades this week – spinner baits and in-line spinners. Not much time was spent casting for Northerns, just a few hours early in the week during the calm stable weather. The two big wind fronts I’ve mentioned in the last two reports have stripped away most of the main lake weed beds. The few big northerns we caught on the main lake were early in the week, the fish we found later in the week were associating with the remaining weed beds that had lots of rock.
