In a few words, the walleye bite is all but on fire!!!
This past Wednesday morning I had the family up early and we were on the road by 6:45 a.m. on our way to Zippel Bay Resort on Lake of the Woods. This was my first time Zippel Bay Resort and it wound up being one of the nicest fishing resorts I have visited. I also know its special when the whole family unanimously agrees on making this trip and annual event.
Anyway, on to the fishing…
Once we checked in I proceeded to ask all of the questions: How’s the fishing? What depth? Spinner rigs or jigs? What crank baits? Best colors? Worms, minnows or leeches? We were told that the wind blew pretty hard the days prior to our arrival. The lake laid down the morning of our arrival and the report from the charters was that the fish were spread out through the water column in 30-35 feet of water and were in a neutral mood. Spinners with either a crawler or leech were working or dark colored cranks. Just head out to 30 feet and start there.
Once we were able to get the cabin squared away, Tyler and I were chomping at the bit to get the boat in the water and wet our lines. As Mom could see in our eyes that Tyler and I were anxious to go fish, she finally gave us permission.
We made our way through Zippel Bay and out to the main lake. Man, the size of open water always amazes me when venturing out. We headed north towards Long Point a few miles and started pulling lead. We fished for a few hours and caught several dink saugers and some walleyes. Nothing to write home about, but we were dialing in our presentation. I think we ended the afternoon with about 10 fish with 3 being big enough for the box.
The next morning the lake was rolling. We motored out to the same area as the previous day, made a few changes to our presentation and it paid off right away with a 25 incher coming to the Beckman. Soon after we had another and another and another….We had dialed in our presentations and it was the same game plan for the rest of the trip. We headed in once we finished filling our limit with a double around noon.
The best outing we experienced was the last one of the trip. My daughter, Amanda decided to join me. There had been some thunder storms in the area, but most were staying to the south as it appeared. I decided to take a chance and off we went. Once we arrived we noticed that have the area to our selves. The nearest boat was a minimum of a mile away. We fished for 2-2.5 hours and boated 20+ fish with only two or three being dinks. All of the other fish were 17 to 22 inches which made for a lot of fun not to mention that we had the place to our selves.
So, the recipe: 4 colors, 40 foot of 10 pound green XT leader, blue and purple cranks trolled at 2.25 to 2.5 MPH in 29 to 33 feet of water. I ran with that long leader because that is what was already on the core rods.
I tried a variety of lures and colors, but came back to Deep Little Ripper Reef Runners with one color in particular; bubblegum. This color lure may not have even made it from the box as quickly as it did, but that was the one the little princes, Amanda wanted on the rod she was using.
I think that we will be heading back up again next year and am already thinking about it.
The bite is going strong and should hold for a while yet.
