After fishing the Sturgeon Excursion the last couple years, my Brother, Nephew and I decided to try a fall Walleye trip. Considering we were rookies at this I think we did OK. The water temp was 43 degrees and the weather was a little disappointing. Low clouds, lots of wind, and I don’t think we made it out of the 40’s all weekend. It was tough enough that Saturday afternoon the parking lot at the Wheeler’s Point access was pretty much empty. For you Sturgeon fishing veterans who’ve had to park down the road in the ditch, you can appreciate how strange it looks to see that lot empty!
While we did find some small Walleyes and a few Saugers up in the river, the main show was out in the main lake. This was my first venture out beyond “The Gap”. Note to self: I need the Lakemaster chip. I spent way to much time driving around in 4 feet of water trying to figure out where I was. Once we were outside the Gap we set up in about 18 feet of water and started fishing jigs and shiners over the side of the boat. A variety of sizes of Walleyes made it to the boat, as well as a jumbo Perch and a big eel pout. We thre back dozens of 10-12 inch Walleyes and Saugers in the next couple of hours and kept a few “eaters” in the 15-17 inch range. No big fish this trip, and we didn’t hear of anything big being taken either. It was great fun watching my 13 year old nephew Andy reel in a nice Walleye.
Back towards the river there were quite a few people fishing Sturgeon. Saturday morning there were a lot of fishing jumping too. Best fish we saw was 56 inches, a real dandy.
We got off to a slow start Friday morning…as I was rolling the boat out of the garage I discovered it was making a horrible grinding noise. It turned out to be the inner bearing on the starboard side. Now I had rebuilt both hubs with new parts last Spring and only had made 3 or 4 long trips. It sounded fine last week. So I was pretty disappointed to have this happen right when we were suppose to leave. Thankfully I had saved the old bearings and races so I had spare parts on hand. Half an hour’s works, greasy hands, and a mess on the garage floor later we had it repaired and we were on our way. The trailer made it there and back but I’m still going to rebuild the hubs with new parts. Again 
I’d like to express my thanks to Tom, JP, and the staff at WigWam for another nice trip and to JP for helping us with some good suggestions on finding some fish.
Can’t wait until April!
Rootski