My Dad and were up on Lake of the Woods from 7/4-7/7 and we had a blast. The fishing is great right now. The first day we pulled spinners, trolled with leadcore and flat lines, and jigged in a couple areas we knew were holding fish. We caught fish on all of the presentations, but we caught more and better fish on the leadcore. The number of big fish is getting so good that in order to win or even cash a check in a tournament, teams have to have one over 28” so we were determined to put together a big fish pattern. The biggest fish of the day was just under 29 inches, one right at 28, and 6 that were 26-28 inches. On Thursday we started in shallow and were immediately rewarded with a 27.5” tank and many more in the 10-20” range. These fish were in 20’ and were relating to large rock boulders. When we were marking boulders, we were catching fish. We also tried to locate some active schools in the deep water on the South end, but couldn’t find any consistent biters.
On Friday during the MTT tournament we made the run 20 miles out to our fish in the middle of nowhere. These fish were miles from any structure, but were relating to a giant school of bait (I wish I would have taken a picture of my graph as the bottom 3 feet were all bait for 50 yards). While it was overcast and raining, the fish were feeding like crazy. On our first pass we had a couple small saugers, a 17, 18, 26.5, and 27” walleye. We worked the same mile by mile area all day and ended up with a bag of 17-18” keepers and a dozen 25-28” fish, but nothing that broke the 28” mark. My Brother and Uncle were fishing the same area and managed to catch a 28.5” and 29” as well as a decent bag of slots putting them in 4th place. On Saturday, we headed to the same area in hopes that both teams could get an over as well as those 19” fish we were catching during prefishing. The fishing was a lot slower and the fish we were catching were all 17” or less or 20-26”. We noticed too that the bait fish were no longer schooled up, but instead they were up high and the fish were much more spread out in the water column. We made the adjustment and brought our baits up to 24’ and immediately started getting bit. The fishing was great for the rest of the day as we landed numerous small fish and low to mid 20” fish.
Over the 4 days, our best cranks were #5 and #7 shad style baits in orange, yellow, white, or some combination of the three. We also caught some fish on Reef Runners, Taildancers, and Thundersticks. The best speeds were 2-2.2 mph. On the first day we noticed how clear the water is by Lake of the Woods standards, so we ran our baits higher than we normally do to target the fish 5-6 feet off of bottom as well as the fish deeper. I have only fished with downriggers a hand full of times, but we ran one leadcore and one downrigger most of the time and the downrigger outfished the leadcore by a slim margin. Most of the bigger fish came on the leadcore however.
Here are some pictures from the two prefishing days. On tournament days, I get too intense to stop and take pictures. 
