With a forecast that was finally worth a darn, we decided to hook up the boat and head back to the river. The bite on Lake Francis Case remains good. Some groups are struggling, but overall, a very consistent bite.
I went back to the area that yielded much success last weekend but was unsure if those fish would still be around. We had a roller coaster week of weather leading up to the weekend. After a nice boat ride Saturday morning, we arrived to the area I wanted to fish. It didn’t take long and my Lowrance was showing those telltale arcs of the walleyes/saugers we were looking for. Golden!
We attacked the break again cranking leadcore. While it’s not the most “fun” way to fish walleyes, its arguably the most effective and consistent method of putting fish in the boat, period. Pulling leadcore can be frustrating to a beginner but with time and practice, you can really present a crankbait with extreme precision to walleyes at any level of the water column. I’m running 15 lb Sufix leadcore with a 25′ or so Sufix 10lb Invisiline Flouro leader. Generally speaking, you’ll get *roughly* 5′ of sink per color on standard leadcore line at a 2 mph baseline. Adjusting speed and or crankbait size/style and you’ll get some variance from there. When you increase speed, you’ll see less depth achieved and the opposite if you slow down. That’s the beauty of fishing this way, the movement of the bait in the water is very fluid and natural. This is something you can’t get with snap weights or trolling weights. In our case, the fish were tight to the bottom. If you see your bait banging bottom, reel up a few cranks until that goes away. With bottom hugging fish, I’m striving to run my baits 12″-20″ off of the bottom. Once you get the hang of getting the bait to the desired depth, the rest is fairly simple. I watch my electronics like a hawk as I’m following a contour. As I’m picking up fish, I’m saving those immediately as waypoints, that way I can spin around and hit that same pocket of fish multiple times. What you’ll find by watching the electronics, is many times there will be a slight contour change or isolated structure that the fish are relating to, and sometimes it’s very subtle. It’s paying attention to the fine details that makes this method so darn effective. Experimenting with different colors and styles of crankbaits is also very important. Keep changing it up until you put a solid pattern together.
#5 Shad raps which were very effective last week still caught fish, but our hot bait this weekend was a Storm Smash Shad, #5 size, and in every UV color I had. Of those, UV Pink and UV orange were the real deal. I’ve had great success on the Smash Shads on the river and on the North East SD lakes, but I don’t think people are taking enough advantage of them. They have a tight wobble similar to a Shad Rap, they rattle, and they run true out of the box. They have a fantastic array of colors/patterns that put eyeballs in the boat. They are also easy on the wallet.
We found limits both Saturday and Sunday pretty handily, and off the water by lunchtime both days. The fish we’re seeing are running in the 15-20″ range, a perfect fish for the pan. Here are a few pics from the weekend.
Saturday
Sunday
When walleyes are spawning, the struggle is real…
The best mental therapy a fisherman can get, a lazy Saturday evening on the river…
