A little bummed writing this as I am now sitting on my couch 380 miles south of Kabetogama instead of being there still. I convinced the gang to move to the opener week for this year hoping to get closer to the ice out and mother nature sure did cooperate. This year I brought my older brother, his first time and first time fishing for walleye. Started out opener morning in a spot where I’ve done well before on eating size fish in 15-20′, mostly sauger but the occasional walleye (the biggest walleye I’ve caught on Kab came from this spot, 27″). We were able to get 5 for supper amd a few smalls that morning. After that I started concentrating on looking for big ‘eyes and a few bass explorations and some general exploring of new places I’ve not been before. Almost all of our big fish came from 5′ depths or less. We were throwing shallow suspending bait (like husky jerks, shadow raps) and they definitely liked long pauses between twitchings. Had a few boatside strikes that were pretty awesome to see. Our best for the week was a stocky 25″ fish I caught in the late-middle of the afternoon Wednesday in 4’ of water (pictured). We didn’t catch huge numbers for the week, but what we caught were quality fish, I’d say our average was 21″-22″. Never touched live bait all week, guys jigging out deeper probably had much higher numbers than we did with a lot more smaller fish, but vertical jigging just isn’t my thing if a more active approach is working. All the walleye we caught were post spawn it seemed, oddly enough the pike were actively spawning, saw a pair doing the dance right off the side of our dock (thought it strange since they are usually one of the first fish to go). Never landed a big pike, had an uppers 30’s pike follow the lure right to the boat but wouldn’t take it and got my line cut by something that gave a couple good tugs before sawing it off. Struggled to get active smallmouth (a first in 6 years) but the walleye bite was good enough i wasnt that bothered by it.
All in all it was,a very fun trip and I made a walleye guy out of my older brother who wants to come again sometime. Don’t think I’ll make it back up again this year but we be back for opener 2019.
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