Summer Arrived
At the end of last week, I predicted that there was a good chance for a walleye weed bite. It was hot, flat, and sunny and some walleyes did go shallow into the weeds. The problem is there were just as many or more walleyes that did not go in the weeds. Instead we found them in 15, 25, and 35 ft. of water. It was common to see multiple daily reports with good walleye results from a wide range of depths.
I don’t think any walleye guide likes flat calm conditions and we had several days of them this past week. Every morning began with a search; shallow to deep, weeds to sand to rock, and switching back and forth between fast plastics and vertical with light jigs. The strategy was to search for a pattern to duplicate. Often, the result was that the entire day was a continual search with 1 – 5 sheet fish from each experiment.
Even with the walleyes scattered, we still managed to come up with good results. For the week, we caught and released 54 walleyes over 27 in., including 12 – 28s and 2 – 29s. Guide sheets averaged 35 – 40 walleyes over 18 in. per boat per day. The highest daily total was 70. Everyone switched up multiple times per day, but at the end of the week, it was pretty much a 50/50 split between plastics pulled at speed and minnows with light jigs fished vertically.
The flat conditions did make it easy to see the cabbage weed tops all around the lake. That combined with anglers wanting to fish for big pike, made for an excellent pike week. We caught and released 40 over 37 in., including 10 – 38s, 6 – 39s, 6 – 40s, 1 – 42, 1 – 43, and a 44.25. Fishing the main lake weeds near deeper water was the key and spoons were the most effective presentation.
Smallmouth bass season is officially over for us, even though there were a couple of randoms caught.
The Take Away:
Even when you think you may know where the walleyes are going to move, you still must do the experiments and let the fish tell you where they are and what kind of a mood they are in.
