After a nice little 7 hour drive to Woodland Resort (yes, I only drive 62mph when towing for fuel efficiency), our party of three settled in for a nice relaxing evening planning our first day of fishing to come (Thursday AM). After a late 9AM start, we ran to some nearby trees and a rocky point to toss a few jigs and bobbers around. Nuttin’ happening but we didn’t stay long. Moved to the south end of the main lake on the west side dragging some spinners and started hitting some smaller eaters. Then we found a nice little hump down there and the action was pretty decent! 15-28 feet was the magic depth (lol, what a range but they seemed pretty evenly spread out). Leeches seemed a bit more favored over the crawlers but it was pretty close. Green and chartreuse colors being the better spinner choices but pink fronts and silver backs did OK too.
Second day (Friday) we decided to get up a little earlier only to get dive bombed by the airplane spraying for bugs. Left a nasty taste in the air. Oh well, it was a pretty bug free resort come to think of it. We headed to the Golden Highway from Graham to Monkey Reef/Island only to just get a few more eaters here and there. We moved up and down the sides at 30FOW to the road tops at 15FOW. At 8AM, the deeper sides seemed more productive than the top. Just enough action to keep busy but not enough to get cocky. The early afternoon brought us back to the south of the main lake where we had been successful the previous day and spinners with leeches and crawlers produced again for more eaters and several decent pike. At this point, we were still looking for some larger fish. Toward the tail end of daylight, we headed to the power poles between the main lake and Graham Island and dragged spinners with again in 27-30FOW, only modest eaters. Tried the jigging raps just for a short time at the base of the poles but not a lot of fish hitting. Truth be told, we only jigged those for about 15 minutes before we decided we were tired and hungry. We bailed before prime light.
Saturday. This was it, the last day to make hay. After all the fish we consumed, we were still shy of our limits but not really worried about it. Larger fish were the game. We scanned around here and there on the North side between Creel Bay and Six Mile not really seeing anything “loaded” worth stopping for. So Doc Hagens point it is. The point off the buoy was busy with boats so we dragged spinners around the area picking up some smaller but nice eaters again. Once the boats vacated the point, we took up position there on the rocks and caught a real nice walleye with bobber and leech right on top of the rocks. Thinking that a nice contrasting dark color might be a good choice, I switched to a Jigging Rap Black bleeding minnow (Fleet Farm model only) in size 7, and the action was heating up! Using the MotorGuide jog feature to eventually cover most of that point, we pretty much got tired of catching walleye. BUT, this was the first place we found some slightly larger fish. Not content with staying there, a quick trip up to the bridge in 6 Mile bay and beyond to find larger fish netted us more eaters (and many tossed back), pike and even a few perch. But no 24″+ fish to be found.
Late afternoon, back to the Doc Hagen point to scrap out a few more eaters. With some decent light left, off to the power poles again to see if the lower light might bring a few larger walleyes in. Nope, but plenty of smaller ones.
I can’t say enough about the consistent action on that lake. Seems about anywhere you go, eaters are there to be had and little shakers keep the action lively. Woodland is a super nice place and would recommend it to anyone. Another trip is being planned soon and I am loading up on jigging raps! 30 already delivered and 60 more being shipped. I’m sold!
Lessons learned: Jigging raps benefit greatly from an ant swivel to keep line twist down to a minimum. Black bleeding minnow was the only hot color in Jigging Raps. Other colors were working but not nearly as effective as black. I have a buddy that will try everything else before switching over just to prove it scientifically to himself. The best jigging stroke with jigging raps varied. Some would bite on aggressive pops with a tall stroke and others preferred a more subtle twitch (1-2 foot hop vs 6-8 foot power stroke).
Depth for the jigging rap was consistent from 15 to 28 feet in that location. It did seem that this day, no snap fastener was better than snaps as both were tried using the identical lures and actions. Next time I will opt for a stouter Medium fast tip with braid over the medium light fast tip with mono that I was using. When that rap gets deeper, it is hard to pop it off the bottom like you can in 15 feet. Finally, with the jigging raps, it did seem more productive to be straight vertical than to cast out and hop it back in. We drove up to the power poles Sat evening in 28FOW where there were 4 other boats either anchored in place or trolling slow with jigging raps (and a few with spinner rigs). They were not getting hit nearly as often as we were jigging vertically. What was working pretty slick was to get upwind and let the boat drift back until the transom marks some fish. I immediately hit the spot lock on the MotorGuide and drop the jigging raps. Bingo, bango, bongo…every time. If we tried dragging the jigging rap through, not so much luck as the other boaters we talked with would attest. Vertical was important this day and location.
Regrets? I wish we spent some time dragging cranks, shallow or deep. Couldn’t get the crew fired up about that method. I’m sure they would have gone along with it if I had insisted (my boat after all and a Captain must have his prerogative sometimes…lol) but we all seemed pretty content to just catch fish at the rate of success we were already having. Another regret is my buddy not charging his battery on his electric knife. Dang it sucks using a traditional knife once you get spoiled with the electrics. Lastly, I would try finding a few more deeper rock piles in about 25FOW to see if we could find some larger fish.
Just some observations. Hope something in this rant was useful. No pics as I’m generally not photogenic anyway.
