Fishing trips for me this year have been far and few between as I sold the boat this past March so I had to rely on others for theirs. I was on ML on opener and that was it. One trip I love every year is the October full moon. With weekends running out before hard water and a 4 day trip to Vegas for work preceding last weekend keeping my eyes open was going to be tough. I was hoping the cooler weather would help but really relied on catching fish to get the adrenaline going. Early on it wasn’t pretty and I was fading fast.
One boat was out in the AM but we had 2 boats (5 guys) fishing by 2pm running cranks and minnows anywhere from 15 – 25 feet of water with nothing to show for it but two smallies and a 20” walleye. We were marking fish, specifically out off the breaks but we just couldn’t get them to get going. A quick stop in at 8:30 for some warm crock pot food and we were back at it. The other boat went to the rocks and the boat I was riding in was going to the weeds. Instead of going to a the spot we found a mile away where we had marked fish out deep waiting to ambush the bait fish in the weeds we started pulling HJ’s right away in 8 – 10 feet of water. It wasn’t 2 minutes and we got bit but it came off. 2 minutes later fish on and it hammered it. As I reel that fish in my buddy says fish on… 8+ hours with very little action and 2 minutes in we have a double, mine on a firetiger HJ and his on the Orange Craw HJ. Mine tapes out at 27” (a little skinny) and his is a very healthy 24”. We exchange fist bumps and get the lines back out and I don’t even have my line out to the 105’ mark and he has another very healthy 25” on. We let the other boat know where we are and what we are running. We end up getting 6 fish in 45 minutes off a .5 mile run of weeds.
After giving my buddy the 5-1 fish lead (he had my only orange craw), I tossed on the crawdad HJ but more of the glass type. A few short moments later I started my comeback (I closed with an 7-5 advantage) with a fat 22”. By the end of the night (1:45), we hadn’t even moved off this half of mile stretch of weeds and never changed from the crawdad HJ’s, our boat ended with 12 walleyes. The other boat added another 10 fish and from what I heard most came on the glass type crawdad that we gave them. Smallest was 19” and biggest was 27”. The 27” wasn’t skinny but definitely lacked the shoulders of the mid 20’s fish we had caught.
We missed a good half dozen (especially late) that came unbuttoned so we may have been going a tad fast in the end. A few of our fish came off right in the net but I caught one (2nd to last picture) that had all three trebles in her mouth.
Summary
Water temps – 44 – 46 degrees
Moon early and mostly cloudy with moon shining through late
8-10 feet of water – Over the remaining weeds
1.1 – 1.5 MPH
22 Fish – 19” – 27”
Most on Crawdad HJ
sounds like a good time.
Great report > thanks.