Big V 7/10 – 7/17

Less than 2 weeks until our trip! We’ll be on the west half (Whispering Winds) fishing for walleye (mostly), pike and panfish. This is our first family vacation to the lake so it’ll be a lot of searching and experimenting. I’ve used my hand-held GPS and chip and have marked far more spots than we’ll ever have time for. Mostly we’ll be searching main lake reefs, points, bars, saddles/neckdowns, flats and weedlines. I think that about covers them all.

As with our trip to Kab/Nam last year, I should be able to put up regular reports on how our days go and what is or is not working for us. Hopefully the weather cooperates! Its mostly a family trip, so it won’t be sun-up to sundown hard-core fishing, but we’ll give it a go!

Well, we head up tomorrow, check in, unpack and then head to dinner at The Landing.

Going to hit weed edges early Sunday and work our way deeper to points and reefs as the day progresses. Check out some deep flats too. Heard there was maybe a big bug hatch on the east end last week, so hope that is all done with.

Should be fun irregardless of the fishing. Better than being at work!

Enjoy!
DT

Fishings been tougher for sure. Bass have been starting to pick up.

Secondary bug hatch has been happening on the west end now. Hoping it gets better as the week progresses.

I hope the landing treats you right. It’s been a busy year for them and their kitchen backs up quite often.

carver wrote:

Fishings been tougher for sure. Bass have been starting to pick up.

Secondary bug hatch has been happening on the west end now. Hoping it gets better as the week progresses.

I hope the landing treats you right. It’s been a busy year for them and their kitchen backs up quite often.

Yeah I figure it’ll be a crawler or leech bite, but I’ll be throwing plastics and jigging raps at the fish too.

As for the Landing…. if it takes a while to get our food, well, just keep the cold drinks coming. Lol

I don’t mean to be too skeptical, but my boat didn’t even get in the water. My motor flops left & right, super loose at the wheel and hydraulic fluid leaking out the cylinder at the motor. I’m not a mechanic, but I hope this can get fixed. Hope a place up here will look at it and work on it Monday.

Take it to Craig at Moccasin Point marina.

BrianF wrote:

Take it to Craig at Moccasin Point marina.

I’ll keep them in mind. Will talk to Timbuktu and if that doesn’t work I’ll call Moccasin. Thanks for the tip!

Well, at least we have my folks and their boat up here too. My folks wanted me to take the kids out fishing today and we tried finding walleye and pike in many different areas, depths, structure, etc from Wake-Em-Up to nearly the end of Norwegian. Not a single walleye or pike to be had. Tried depths from 6ft down to 30ft and a number of presentations. So, all that means is we need to expand our search area and keep trying.

On the upside, I did get the kids on a bunch of decent bluegills today and they had fun catching them. Tomorrow I hope to get lucky and get my steering problem fixed! If not, we’ll be playing lots of cards and board games. Lol

Back home now and kind of glad it’s over to be honest. Did get the hydraulic steering fixed and my boat back by late Tuesday afternoon. Timbuktu Marine was so awesome and generous to squeeze my boat into their schedule.

I missed out on 1.5 days of fishing, but after getting my boat back we did finally find some walleyes. The week was warm, sunny (sort of due to the smoke haze) and nearly dead calm which made it tough.

Best fishing was early (sunrise to 9:00am) and late (6:00pm on). Early in the morning I found them on mid-lake reefs in 5ft to 8ft. Mid-day we found them in 11ft – 16ft on reefs and shoreline structure. And late in the day in 9ft to 13ft. If there was a breeze, the upwind side of structure was clearly the place to be.

We didn’t put the wood to them, but got enough for a nice fish fry one night and we brought home 6 limits. Most fish were 13.5″ to 17″ with only 1 in the slot at 21″. No big fish this year. Maybe they were deeper, but getting eaters in anywhere from 5ft to 16ft, we didn’t have a reason/need to fish deep.

We used crawlers (jigs, lindy, harnesses) 99% of the time but I did get a few eyes trolling a #4 Salmo over a reef. There are more dang perch than I care to ever see again. Lol. Bluegills are everywhere, literally! And our best fishing was in both Wake-Em-Up and Niles/Wolf Bay area.

The Landing is down 3 cooks. No entres being served, took 1.5hrs to get our burgers & fries. My boat was down & out for nearly 3 days, but I’m glad I got it in time to still use it. The crown on my tooth came off (wtf). My boat has a small leak somewhere and I lost probably $100 in gear. BUT, in the end we still had a good time. I’m just glad to be home in one piece.