English River System Report

I was up on Lake Umfreville which is part of the English River system last week so I figured I would post a quick report. The water temps were still pretty darn cold, not to mention the air temps. In the main lake the water averaged 44 degrees. In the bays it warmed up into the low 50’s every day once the sun got things going. In a nutshell the walleyes were still spawing or just finishing up. Many of the males were still squirting milk and very few large females were caught. The larget walleyes that were caught were all near some type of current where warmer water was dumping into the main lake or channel. Crankbaits were the mainstay for pike, walleyes and smallmouth with all 3 species in 8 feet of water or less. Slow retrieves with occasional pauses with Husky Jerks, X-raps, and x-rap shads were all effective. For the walleyes the pause was the key they would eat it while it was sitting in front of their face. I did some experimenting also, which turned out effective for pike. The new Glidin’ Rap and a 7 inch rubber Castaic swimbait both worked for big pike. My boat ended up with about 20 pike over 30 inches for the week with the biggest being 40 inches and numerouse in the 35-38 range. Walleye fishing should really start to turn on in the next week or two and the bigger females start to feed. I included a couple of the better fish that made it to the boat and one agressive pike. Sorry about the pic quality I had to do some compressing to get the file size down. Good luck!!