The family had a fun time on our Annual family vacation up in Alexandria, MN. Despite the weather, which felt more like late September/early October, we got out and did some fishing. We were targeting mainly walleye and panfish, but caught an occasional Bass and pike mixed in.
The panfish were the hardest to find, which was a little discouraging because the kids really enjoy hauling them in. Seems like they were all spawned out and there were no beds to be found. We tried hitting several different locations like submerged weeds, pencil reeds, and tops of points. Also tried using several different baits to try and entice a bite like worms, tiny leeches, and waxies, but could only find them very sporadic and never could find the mother load.
Walleye were a little more cooperative. I started my walleye journey for the week out with Joe Scegura who runs a top notch guide service out of the Alexandria lakes area. http://www.jsguideservice.com/fishing/) I have fished with Joe before and he is a great guide and person to fish with. This time I brought along my 6 year old son Zach. This was his 1st guide trip ever and boy was he excited. We started out on the lake pulling lindy rigs and got a few walleye. After that we started searching for more spots, but we were on the front end of a storm and you could feel the weather changing. By about 8:30pm the wind was blowing and the waves kept growing. It was harder to rig and feel with the rod due to the wind and waves, so we decided to try pulling cranks as our last try. By this time we had about 2 ft rollers pounding the boat and every once in a while get sprayed. After several passes we decided to hang it up at around 10:30pm. Joe definitely tried his hardest to put us on fish. We did end up catching quite a few fish, perch, rock bass, but only a few walleye. I would have thought that on the front end of a storm that the walleye would be biting as well as the other fish seemed to be in the lake, but that is why it is fishing. We didn’t get home until about 11:30pm and Zach was all worn out. Still was a great time and my son loved every minute of it. Thanks again Joe!
After that it rained for 2 days strait so Tuesday and Wednesday was a bust for fishing. That was ok; because I was still on vacation watching movies and going into town to eat any enjoy our family time together. Thursday was a little better, but cold, highs in the upper 50s to low 60’s. We targeted mainly panfish, with not a lot of takers. I tried pulling cranks in mid day and did get 1 walleye to bite that my son pulled in.
Friday was the day to fish though. Even though it was the last day of the trip, the weather broke, winds were fairly clam, and the sun broke out. I got up at 5:15 am and was in the boat by 5:30am. I started out on 1 of 3 main points out on the lake pulling a lindy rig as Joe showed me earlier in the week. I did catch a few perch and sunfish, but no walleye as of yet. By about 7:30 I still did not have a walleye in the boat, so I decided to try something else. I tied on a spinner rig and instead of using live bait I decided to do a trick that works well for me when I am up in Canada fishing. I use a 3inch Berkley Gulp Minnow grub. The extra vibration of the tail flickering in combination with the spinner really has a lot of attraction qualities that I think was the difference in putting fish in the boat. The other nice thing about using this technique is that I was in about 14-16ft of water on the edge of a point that has submergent vegetation. The artificial helps in that it does not come off the hook and you can pull the spinner through it without having to worry about re-baiting as often. By 8:30am I had two 14 inch walleye in the boat and was pretty happy about that.
I then went back to the dock quick to pick up my son and see if we could get a few more before everyone back at the cabin was ready to have breakfast. I went to a different point this time and I was the only one left on the lake. We started pulling our spinners in the same depth range 14-16 ft looking for weeds and found them. I have a picture of my graph that shows this. 1st pass got a walleye. I made 7-8 more passes on this same piece of structure and pulled out a total of 5 walleye in 1 hour. All in all 7 nice eaters were in the well and I was super happy. We started back to the dock by 9:30am and meet everyone for breakfast.
Later in the evening I tried the same technique on the same structure, but did not catch a walleye. I did have 2 bites that I had fish on, but didn’t get back to the boat. My son did get 1 more Northern to end the trip.
It was a great feeling getting your son on his first walleye. 
The first thing he asked me was, “Joe, are we going to put numbers in the boat?” 
He probably got that from your show James!
