Deep Walleyes already? or something else

Hey guys,

Was out on an area lake yesterday, Sugar (Wright County). First time fishing it. My buddy and I covered the shoreline structures and 1 hump pretty well. Not necessarily fishing, but just trying to get a feel of where bottom differences are, weedlines, and where we marked fish. Up and down the breaks, trying to find a pattern. This lake gets pretty deep, 40-50 feet in the basin.

It was interesting. We didn’t mark any significant marks up shallower or even on the weedlines (14-15 ft). It wasn’t until we reached 30+ ft is when the larger marks appeared, either alone or 2-3 at the most. We did mark one area where we counted 5 of them in a pod. Some sitting on the bottom in 40ish ft and some off the bottom. All in the red area of the image. There were also more bait balls up higher about 10-15 ft from the surface. Way more than up shallower in say 20 ft or less. Lowrance said 61-62 degree water temp. I’ll also add, the bottom transitioned from soft to hard at around those depths in the red circle, from what we could tell. Softer down the slope, harder as you approach the basin and in the basin.

The lake does have Tullibee on it, but I would imagine the Tullibee to not be lone marks or only 1-3 marks at a time? I thought they were more of schooling fish. Correct me if I am wrong.

Curious if anyone has insight to something like this, maybe similar situations on other lakes or has fished Sugar that they might know.

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I believe that lake has musky, so I would wager you were marking Tullibee (or another bait fish school) on the bait balls and the musky were underneath. As for shallow marks they are pretty rare as your cone is pretty small under 15 fow I believe, so eye’s could have still been up shallow and just not showing up. Side scan does a better job shallow imo, which if you were using it and are familiar marking fish on side scan disregard that last sentence lol.

I forgot to add this, the bigger marks weren’t underneath the bait balls like we would expect. In some cases we had very large marks in 40 ft, those fish were sitting in 20 ft suspended. We suspected those were musky. The ones we are questioning are the bigger marks in 40 ft on the bottom or within a few ft from the bottom.

These were individual marks though or at most 2-3, if you’re marking Tulibee, wouldn’t you mark bigger schools?

He is about to get side imagine on his boat.

Drop a jigging rap down there and find out but I’d be willing to bet they are walleyes.

This time of year it is pretty hard to mark walleyes they are usually very tight to the bottom. they will show up as a slight bottom difference at best. When water warms fish will be up more and easier to mark.

biggill wrote:

Drop a jigging rap down there and find out but I’d be willing to bet they are walleyes.

Just be sure you are able to keep (slots) and do keep fish from 40′ deep.

The MN DNR study on depth says 18% death rate at 30 ft, 40 ft it jumps to 31% mortality. Definitely catch and keep

Not a good #s lake for walleyes-as mentioned lots of other stuff in there though.

Hi, is it a clear lake? What is the spring forage base? You will not mark many fish under 10′ if clear. I would rig or jig away from the boat. …?.?

I’d be willing to bet those were suckers. I had the same deep marks last wknd. I dropped the camera and found scattered suckers in the 40 foot range. If you have your sonar dialed in correctly, suckers show up like a walleye but give off a slightly stronger signal.

The report that I pass along from Kurt’s Island Bait in Minocqua was mentioning that with the lack of forage shallow right now, both the perch and walleyes have been dining in the mud line break, which could have them in deeper areas… but I do agree that suckers could be a real possibility!!!

Mark