Mid Summer Groove:
The walleyes are not as concentrated as we would like, but it was still good fishing this week. We did find a couple of shallow water weed bites and there were a few nice fish caught deep off main lake rock (deep water sand was a bust), but most of the walleyes were caught between 20 and 30 ft.
Reviewing the daily guide sheets, it was very easy to identify the bite windows. There were a couple of awesome mornings followed by less than stellar afternoons. There were also a few hot afternoon bites where everyone did well. The hardest part about this past week, after you found the key depth was to figure out whether the bite was getting hotter or to identify when the activity level was going down.
We all aggressively bounced between big jigs and plastics pulled at speed to lighter jigs with live minnows. When I say that, I mean that each guide boat would often switch up between the two presentations more than 6 times a day. Sometimes you hit a pattern and you are on it for the day. Other times you miss a clue, waste an hour, and get behind the 8 ball. Sometimes we choose correctly and sometimes we don’t. Either way, my takeaway from this summer is that this guide crew is fearless. The senior guides leave the known grade A spots and hunt down others.
For the week, we caught and released 53 walleyes over 27 in., including 12 – 28s, 4 – 29s, and 1 – 31. The average walleye volume took a little bit of a hit, because there were a couple of really tough afternoon bites. Lots of marking and not catching. Guide sheets averaged 30 walleyes over 18 in. per boat per day. At the same time, the highest daily guide sheet was 103! Andrew knocked it out of the park.
If I had to put a number on it, I would say that 15% of our guiding time was spent on big pike this past week. With that in mind, the results were actually pretty good. For the week, we caught and released 16 over 37 in., including 7 – 38s, 3 – 39s, 1 – 40 , 1 – 41, and one of our guides caught a jaw dropping 46! I know I said it last week, but spoons are still the best game in town.
The Take Away:
Even when you locate walleyes, the bite can still be unpredictable. Be ready to shift gears between aggressive to subtle presentations and your success rate will increase.
