Vermilion 9/23,24,25

My club was up on Vermilion last weekend for our Fall tourney. during the week before the touney a few members were up early and they said fishing was pretty easy for largemouth. bass were under docks and in weedy bays and weeds with rocks. no real big fish were caught during the but LM in the 16, 17 and 18 inch range. The good Smallies had not moved out the underwater humps yet. an underwater camera could find the occasional SM or walleye, but not numbers, and no bigger fish. we had a cold front on saturday and the rain started around 9am, and rained the rest of the day. it did put the easy fish off that were found days earlier. LM were also no longer under docks, and the few guys that did catch some found them just around shoreline weeds mostly small club legal bass 12-15″. not many good fish were going on lures, one guy had 3- 18 inch LM for the tourney caught those on summo crawlers. As far as Walleyes, just a few boats had two or three 15-18″ers. those were caught trolling cranks, and lindy rig minnows. Just about all of the Walleyes caught during the week and weekend were short fish, 10-13 inchers, so most boats did not waste much time fishing them (our club walleye minimum is 15″). Northern were biting well in the weedy bays, over and around weeds and rocks. no big pike landed, but plenty of fish in the 23-24″ up to 31 inches. Bluegill were also numerous in the weedy bays mostly 7 to over 8 inches, and 4 were over 9 inches. The biggest surprize was the crappies were more cooperative than years past. some boats found them in again in weedy bays around weeds in 4-7 feet depths, with small jigs with crawler or rainbow minnows. they were light biters. only two boats had Crappie limit with most fish 11-13+inchers, and one guy had one over 14 inches. one boat found his crappies in 20 feet of water off a shoreline point and used feather jigs, jigged. a few 10 inchers showed up, but most of their fish were 11’s,12’s and 13’s. Overall everyone did pretty well dispite the front and saturday’s rain. the Saturday Club steak fry is always a hit. now all we have to do is DRY out all our gear…

hope to get a pic or two on here later…

Jack..

Jack, I just left my Vermilion summer abode on September 30th. What end of the lake were you fishing, the East (Tower) or the West (Cook)?

Cook side entirely, did get down to the south end of Oak Narrows, was a far as I got to the Tower side.
Jack..

The Cook side is my haunt also, took a lot of ‘eyes out of those waters this year, most of which were returned the drink! I do wander down to prospect on the Tower end now and then, however, I know the West end water much, much better

Wow, nice crappie! I sure wish I could find some of those on the east end.