Not Extreme weather changes, but unsettled:
Looking back over the week, it was usually windy, but the weather shifted from hot to cool, rainy to dry, and from dry to humid and cool. None of those changes were dramatic and the overall walleye bite improved over last week.
We fished it all hard this week; rock, sand, deep, shallow, not so deep, not so shallow, weeds, not weeds….. You get the idea. Each day was a mixed bag. The 6 in. Gulp Nemesis caught a bunch of big walleye on ¾ oz. jigs pulled at speed. We found a few new areas with steep rock walls adjacent to deep water that produced well. The guide crew continues to use the standard operating procedure of covering water with big jigs and Gulp and then going back over the best areas with smaller jigs and live bait. The bigger walleyes were caught in water deeper than 20 ft.
Sometimes the numbers paint a better picture than the words. For the week, we caught and released 57 walleyes over 27 in., including 9 – 28s, 4 – 29s, and 1 – 30. Average walleye volume increased to 36 over 18 in. per boat per day. Walleye fishing was good, but there was never a focal pattern or location. Every boat was switching up speeds, techniques, and areas multiple times a day.
The big pike are still MIA. There was some effort spent searching for them this past week, but aside from a few sightings of bigger fish, it was uniformly considered a fail. For the week there was 1 – 39 and 1 – 37 caught and released.
Not every group takes advantage of the borrow rod options available in all our guide boats, but most do. The ability for guides to simply switch out rods and conduct a different experiment moving from 1.3 mph vs. .003 mph or back, is a huge tactical advantage. The average guide boat completes more than 6 full rod switches each day. Occasionally, that number can approach a dozen. Flexibility and a problem-solving approach to the day were keys to consistent success this past week.
