It was another excellent week for bass, the walleye fishing had it’s ups and downs, and there were several great pike pulled from the maturing weed beds. The weather was again unstable, but the changes were more daily in nature instead of one great big front coming through. Most of the rain and T-storms came in during the supper hour or at night, but they still had an affect on the fishing. The mayfly hatch is in full swing. The bass bite was also a little hit and miss because of the hatch, but when it was “ON” it was so good, that it made up for the times that you checked spots and they were a bit “off.”
The walleyes are steadily making their way to the main lake, but they are using every depth zone as they go. There were just as many walleyes caught in 27 ft. this past week as there were in 17. At the same time, we also caught walleyes as shallow as 3 and as deep as 37 ft. Some weed beds held ‘eyes and some didn’t. Some summer spots produced and others didn’t. The standard procedure for the week was to fish it all, every day. Check the base of a weedbed in 10 ft. Stop at a mid-depth sand flat. And then fish a deep water summer spot. Pull spinners fast deep and then fish jigs slow shallow. The patterns and locations changed each and every day and if you were’nt aggressively hunting the fish systematically, you just wouldn’t find them. Jigs (1/4 and 3/8 oz.) were still the most consistent presentation, but there were also a lot of walleyes caught on spinners and bouncers.
There were a few big walleyes caught in 15ft. or less this past week, but the majority were caught between 18 – 34 ft. Volume was variable, but remained strong averaging 40 walleyes over 18 in. per boat, with the highest daily total at 80. For big fish, there were 31 walleyes over 27., including 9 – 28s, and 1 – 29, and 1 – 30.5 inch walleye caught by Sue Simonette.
It was another great bass week, with 72 over 17 in., including 8 – 18s, 4 – 19s. The top water bite was marginal, as most bass were caught with either jigs and plastics or texas rigged plastics.
The most notable change for the week was the big pike bite. The cabbage weed beds are just starting to top out and we had several boats out this past week targeting big pike and some were very successful. For the week, there were 8 pike over 38 in. caught and released including 2 – 39s, a 41.75, 42.25, and a 42.75. Three of the big ones were caught by Ron DeGraaf, including the biggest, a 41.75 in. monster that would have pushed the scales close to 25 lbs.
