The week felt like a true fall week. There were some days with heavy weather, daily highs were often 60 degrees or less, and nights were chilly. Every morning, I’ve been seeing lots of steam rising from the lake, and our graphs are showing lake surface temps down around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. I always look forward to weeks like this in the fall, they are often the trigger for changes in both the walleye patterns and big pike activity.
This week was exactly that. We started the week catching walleye by moving slowly with subtle presentations in 35-40 feet, and we finished the week catching fish at speed in 15-20 feet of water. The fish could still be hit or miss, and our guides often had to hit a bunch of spots before finding a bite they could capitalize on, but the walleye were trending shallower. We fished a total of 48 guided days this week, and we caught and released 19 walleyes over 27 inches, including 4 over 28, and one 29 incher. The guide sheets averaged 28 walleyes over 18 inches per day. There were some stand out days; the highest daily total was 105 walleyes over 18 inches on the sheet.
Looking through the week’s guide sheets, I saw about 10 total days spent pike fishing. Fall fishing for pike is often a real hunt, lots of spots may be blank before you contact a big one. Some of our boats really put their time in to get their success. For the week we caught and released 13 Northern pike over 37 inches, including 5 over 40 inches, and two 42 inchers. On the weather days we found some big pike on rock structures, but for the rest of the week most of our big fish came from the few remaining weed patches in our favourite tried and true fall spots.
We have not put in any real time searching for them, but we have caught a handful of bonus bass so far this fall – we topped out with a 19 incher this week.
