Kinda quiet out there…

My weekend at the pond was on the slow side this trip. The highlight for me was Thursday evening on a 2 hour solo trip from 9-11 pm where I put back to back slots in the box right around 10pm. Bobber fishing the east side rocks in 11-15 feet of water. Leeches on a red hook with 4 chartruse beads got bit.

Spent the day Friday searching out some new water without much luck. I did bump into a couple smallies, but no eyes. I picked up a tip on the radio that the bass were keying in on “Orange Anything” and that turned out to be a good bit of info. The crawdads looked like they were molting their shells (Fish spitting up craws) and that made sense that orange was a good color! An orange ringy and orange blade on a meps both got bit.

I had the pleasure to spend Saturday afternoon fishing with a neighbor from the resort. We spent about 5 hours trolling cranks on the mud and only had one fish to show. But that fish was a dandy 27 – ¾ incher that had a big gut. Third time this year someone in my boat has said the words “That’s the Biggest Walleye I have Ever Caught”. Here is my bud “Al” with his fish.

Sunday was again slow. I burned a load of gas running around as the lake had laid down dead flat. Tried several live bait presentations but only had a few perch to show for my efforts.

So, how did you do?

Nice pic Jon! I’ll be more than happy to be the fourth person to say that!

Nice pic Jon!
I spent most of the day out trolling on Sunday and scrounged up 7 fish and lost one. The morning bite seemed to be the best ans as the sun came out and the lake laid down, the bite got pretty quiet. I found a pod a fish as big as a public swimming pool and worked them for about 2 hours and boated 3 out of the group. THe nice thing was the wind was at a standstill which made turning around a breeze to pull back thorugh there.

I spent just a short time on a couple rock piles in Wahkon bay late Sunday afternoon to do a little scouting for some upcoming smallie trips in August and found a couple nice groups of smallies, but the neat thing was that I found a bunch of smallies busting th surface out in 25 feet of water about a 1/4 mile away fro many structure!

Looks like a may be long trolling some light plastics in the near future?

Hey guys. I was out Saturday early morning in the fog and in 2.5 hours missed one and finally caught one fish……But she hit the tape at 29.75 inches! Caught it out in the deep nowhere about 100 feet from the edge of the flats out in 35 feet, suspended a good 5-8 feet off the bottom. I worked a pod for another hour with no results. Spinner/Leech combo on an inline sinker.

Question;

You guys are trolling these “suspended” fish off the flats. Has anyone tried jigging with “whistler” jigs and bait????

Gary.
I’ll be doing some jigging this weekend. First trip to the lake so maybe doing something out of the ordinary might do the trick. I’ll have a report Sunday night!

Nice fish Mykal!

-J.

Nice fish Mykal!! Those big girls still seem to be on the chew this year.

As for the jigging up those big ones. I hear and see people try but trolling seems to be the best way to get them to go. You troll over A LOT of fish before you get a biter to go. You may end up jigging over thousands of walleye that do not want to bite if you don’t cover some water. Just my thoughts on the subject.

The key to these big fish is cover water until you get some to go then stay after them until they are done. It isn’t fast and furious by any means. But it is a quality versus quanitity deal.

So;

what is the forage that these fish are chasing, keeping them in the “open” water? Ciscoes???

Or,

Are they “migrating???

I’m seeing these fish puke up YOY perch and other small minnow sized fish. You see clouds of bait everywhere you troll out there. Like Scott said, no problem marking fish. Just need to find the one’s that want to chew on your crank!

-J.

hey Jon,

Nice to see you that you can catch fish. I hope to one day get out on the big pond and try to catch me a few of them eyes. i will probably run into you out on the water. nice pictures.

shane

Thanks Guys. I trolled over MANY big fish. I wish I could have stayed longer to find another fish or 2. My camera was dead and I was lucky enough to find a boat close by that had a Polaroid camera. I always seem to be solo when I tag a big mama.

Hey guys ,frequent reader but less fequent writter. We just started at the open water trolling thing on the pond with actually decent success for size but not numbers at all. Fished last Fri thru Sun trolling boards ( 6 to 7 hours a day I suppose ) and crankbaits managed only to catch 7 fish but of those 3 were over 28″ . We used evey kind of crankbait I had ,which is quite a few and really only had success on deep little rippers run 15′ to 20 below the surface . We couldn’t get any of the deeper fish that we could see on the graph to bite .We even tried leadcore with which I’ve had success in the past with but could not get any of the deeper fish to go.Are you guys catching the deeper fish ? If so how? Also ,are you actually able to “see” the fish that are up in the top 15′ of water ? I see balls of bait and tulibees but never any real solid marks that would appear to be eyes. I was just taking it for granted that they were there . Any insight much appreciated. I did see the red Yarcraft out there from time to time as well as the guy with the extra lines and the umbrella, I was in the white Yarcraft (tiller).

Take care guys

Quote:

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managed only to catch 7 fish but of those 3 were over 28″ .

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I would call that a good day!

I like to run a line in the upper 10-12 foot range now that the water temp is getting close to and into the 70’s. If it get’s bit both lines (2 guys in the boat of course!) go high. I believe the fish up high are the active fish out there. Maybe not the biggest one’s but the biters.

-J.

eye1000us,

For the past several weeks I have been concentrating on the upper portion of the water column. IF you turn your sensitivity way up your graph, you will mark solid marks up high. (6-12 down) These are walleyes and pods of bait, but you will see definite arcs up that high when your graph sens. is up. The last couple of outings has taken us near the bottom for our producers. Bigger deep divers are needed to obtain these depths, but they are easily achievable with super-braids. Pulled 3 fish last night and lost another. THe bite has fell off the pace over the past several days, but stil as always this is a quality over quanity for this game as Jon mentioned above.

Congrats on a couple nice fish!

Thanks for the insight guys.Always trying to learn something new to help make me a better fisherman.

Take care