Despite some crazy wind last Friday and Saturday, we found a lot of Leech Lake walleyes on a windblown point. That bite was best on Friday.
The ‘eyes we found were stacked on a break from 5 1/2 ft to 7 feet of water, and not any deeper. A jig and minnow was the hot bait, helping us boat 25 or so walleyes in a couple hours.
With no larger fish, we moved around on some sand flats that typically hold fall walleyes, but didn’t find much of anything. Water temps were in the mid 60’s, so the fishing should get better. The pods of walleyes I’ve found in the last few trips have been smaller fish, with some being just large enough to keep. But the future looks pretty good, for the most part.
Fishing on Saturday with the same clients, we opted against getting beat up by the wind again, as we had our walleyes needed for a limit, and fished some sheltered areas. We didn’t catch but a half-dozen walleyes, but did catch lots of perch and it was much more pleasant. Even the offshore drift was a fast drift.
Both days were just half days and we didn’t do too bad, all things considered.
A side note: Back before the walleye crash, it was the norm that the 15th of September (or mid-September) was the start of the hot fall bite. I was always disappointed by that, as I wanted to be bow or bird hunting and had to work. But It was nothing to boat 50, 60 walleyes, and most were 20-plus inches and many over that. It hasn’t been that way for years, at least for me. The bite has been more sporadic and runs later in the fall. Back then, finding fish was easy, as they were everywhere.
There are some good days now, of course, but it’s not what it used to be. There seem to be a decent number of small fish in the system, but I’m not seeing the numbers of 17’s, or even the numbers of slot fish I think I should be seeing. I just wanted to vent this, as I know there have been a lot of complaints about the fishing this year on Leech and I don’t think it’s all fishermen error. This is just my uneducated opinion, of course.
