Leech Lake walleye update

I had a chance to spend a few days up on Leech Lake last week, preparing for and then competing in the FLW Walleye League event. It was my first trip ever to Leech, and it won’t be my last.

During the pre-fishing period, I concentrated on relatively shallow water, 8-12 feet deep, in wind-blown areas. It wasn’t hard to find those, believe me, with winds in the 20-30 mph range, gusting to 40 on Thursday. We were able to catch fish drifting jigs, live bait rigging and pulling spinners. My best bite for keeper fish (14-18″) was on spinners, so that’s what I decided to do on game day.

My co-angler Chad and I spent our day pulling harnesses behind bottom bouncers: 1.5 oz bouncers, speed 1.2-1.5, depth 10-13 feet. Our shallow bites fizzled out a bit since the wind was no longer pouring in to my pre-fishing areas, but moving deeper into some emerging weeds allowed us to contact the fish again.

We ended up weighing a tournament limit of 15-17″ fish, which gave us some good points towards the championship but didn’t put is in contention for the $$. With only two days of prep and no prior experience on the lake, I devoted my time to developing a numbers bite, rather than trying to swing for the fences. So, while our finish was nothing special, I am happy that I was able to find a reasonable tournament limit with just a short amount of preparation.

The photo below is one of the many 20-24″ fish we caught pre-fishing and on game day. Beautiful fish, but given Leech’s 18-26″ protected slot, these didn’t do us a lick of good on game day.

Thanks to my partner Jason Sullivan, my pre-fishing guest Dave Vollmer, and IDO staffer Ron “Sliderfishn” Bukovich for their help in preparing for and fishing in the tournament. For now, back to guiding…and then on to Bemidji in July!

You had Sliderfishn showing you where to find WALLEYES ???

Nice read Jason, Sounds like dispite the conditions you guy’s were able to have a sucessful day out on the water.

Quote:

---

You had Sliderfishn showing you where to find WALLEYES ???

---

Hey now, just because you caught EIGHT walleyes in one day on P2 doesn’t mean ya gotta tease everyone else.

Nice Report Jason.

For those of you that are looking to get away on a good fishing trip, I must say that the Leech Lake bite is on big time!

I was up last weekend as well, and the bite for us was phenominal. We ended up boating 20-30 fish each day, with our biggest stretching the tape at 29.5″. We also had a few more fish over the 26″ mark, and another dozen or so that went 24″ or larger. Slot fish were abundant as well.

We found the fish to be holding in a variety of depths, which was directly related to how strong the wind was blowing. Rigging Leeches seemed to be the best bite for us, but we were able to dial in the jigging bite as well.

All in all some of the best fishing I’ve had in quite some time. Leech is back!

I echo the reports above. The fishing is fantastic! I fished the FLW as a co Wed-Fri. and learned a ton about the lake, many new techniques, and caught a bunch of fish. We had one over 26″, a bunch of 22-24″ walleyes, and plenty of 14-18″ fish as well. Thinking back I think I caught about ever size fish from 8″ to 26″ out there. The other amazing thing is we caught fish from 3′ down to 40′. They are everywhere!

On Saturday I got to put my knowledge to the test when I took my Dad and Uncle out. Not wanting to crowd any areas I knew the top 10 pros were fishing, I pulled out the map and found a similar area. We pulled into the spot and immediately started marking fish. Sometimes the phrase “the fish were stacked” gets used to describe an area full of fish. Well these fish were literally stacked. It was nothing to see 4-5 fish on the screen at once. For the next 2 hours the 3 of us had a blast. It was one fish after another with multiple triples in the mix. That will be a day I’ll never forget. We caught all of these fish in 15-17′ with jigs and minnows. The rest of the day we rigged leeches and redtails for bigger fish and caught a 10-15 in the 22-25″ range.

My Uncle said repeatedly, maybe I should sell my place on LOTW and get one here. With half the drive and some fantastic fishing, I think he might be on to something.