Saturday – 07/12

Jon J and I headed out on Saturday morning for a trip to the mud flats. Our main goal for the morning was to troll but we decided to make a pass with live bait. We hit 9 mile and were encouraged by the fish that were appearing on the graph. During the pass we saw numerous pods of bait and fish up at 15′ along with fish at the bottom. Nothing took our offering during the drift so we shifted gears and pulled out the trolling rods. After a run up wind , we set the lines and waited. It took a while before the first fish hit and it was Jons line. He boated a nice 26″ walleye. Encouraged , we continued the pattern and a bit later it was my turn. This fish was only 22″ but it was a start. Too bad the action was not better for us. It turned out to be a slow morning for us. One other 23″ fish came on a spinner/crawler rig. For 5 1/2 hours of effort we did not do as good as we hoped. We started out with 2′ waves and when we called it a day the lake was near calm. There will be better days for us.
Dino

Here is the fish that fell to the spinner/crawler rig. This poor fish has one of the growths that we have seen and read about. Other than the growth , the fish appeared to be healthy and feeding well.

Dino ,,,were you guys using planer boards ?

Yes , we did use boards to get the cranks away from the boat a bit. The first pic shows one just visible above the rod and reel.
Dino

Well Dean, ya know what they say…..A bad day fishin’ beats….!!

I should have dragged you off that mower Sunday! The SMB were snapping.

Anybody have a report from the Red Door Tourney?

Jon J.

Jon

There’s a chance that Dustin. Mike Little and I might break for Mille Lacs later this week and we’re actually more interested in the SMB bite than the walleye thing. Can you share any specifics with me about technique, baits and structure that will cut down our search time since we’ll only be up for the day?

Thanks a heap.

Shoreline rock around the Big Point area. 5 inch Kailins in the Green with gold fleck. (Think it’s called Chartruse Speckel)Using your H20 Super Doo Jigs. (Man are those jigs sharp!!)

Seems like the best time is high noon and a little wind really helps. You know you are in the right area when that first bass hits and 3 others follow it to the boat!!

J.

H2O, check out the north side west of the Red Door to Knox Point. It is a rock shoreline, and there is a finger bar that comes out in the middle. Good Luck and work the jigs.

Well the scoop on the Red Door tourney is, Steve Bisset and partner Justin Winter won it with their first days weight. These guy’s weighed 2 big fish the first day and came back with another one and a slot the second day for 25 lbs.
Not sure what they were doing but I think they were pulling boards.
There had to be 30 boats pulling boards saturday afternoon in our sight.
After day one there were 48 teams tied for 10th place at 0 lbs. so everyone was still in the money hunt.
The second place weight was over 14 lbs.and third was 12 lbs.
Great weather and I ditto Dee Zee’s last report, what he said worked to a T for us, we just couldn’t break the 28″ mark, our largest was just over 27″s.
My partner for the tourney Mike Gangl, did boat a 20 lbs. northern late saturday afternoon, 5 minute before we had to break for check-in. We thought we had a weigh fish on till that green gator surfaced.

Steve Bisset is a lead trolling machine. I saw him work his magic out there during a PradCo photo shoot a few weeks back that we did. He had the right combonation working then. Not sure if this is what he was doing over the weekend, bu if I had to guess, leadcore was in the game on boards.

The game of inches!