While preparing to write the week’s report I always look back at what I wrote last week. And, well, it’s pretty clear that last week I was way too optimistic about the fall weather and changing walleye patterns. Lac Seul hit the rewind button on us this week. Warm days, lots of south winds, and warm nights had lake surface temps rising again. This week the weather was full-on summer again, and the walleye were full-on summer again too.
Talking around the guide table in the evening we were very conscious of the return to summer weather and the possible effect it might have on the fish – and did have on the fish. With that in mind, most of us chose to vary our day between deep summer walleye spots and fall transition walleye depths. That takes more time to be thorough and as a result there were some days when we ran out of time before finding the bite we wanted. There were also some very high-volume bites this week, and they came from summer style fishing. That meant lots of time spent deep, moving slow, and using finesse presentations. And as has been the case all summer – on rock, more rock, and rock again. Summer sand was great if you wanted to see fish on your graph – but the fish on those sand structures were consistently negative and extremely difficult to catch.
Fish in transition depths rarely showed up in numbers, but early in the week some boats were able to put together a good day and find walleye of size in transition depths by using movement and persistence. As one of our guides put it after one round table meeting “Just keep the boat moving…” – keep the boat moving on each spot and then moving to the next spot. Collect a few fish from each spot, using speed to cover the spot quickly, then move on to the next spot and repeat, not counting on any one spot to hold more than a small number of fish.
Probably best not to talk about pike fishing this week! Just 2 over 37, 1 over 40. One of our toughest pike weeks in years.
The walleye numbers: There were 51 guided days this week – an average of 7 boats on the water each day. For the week we caught and released 20 walleyes over 27 inches, including 7 – 28’s, and a 30. The daily guide sheets averaged 33 walleyes over 18 inches per day, and the highest daily total was 105 walleyes over 18 inches in one day.
