Lac Seul late July

My family has been fishing the north end of Lac Seul for about 50 years but all but two trips have been in early June. I am going to take my son for his first tip in late July. In June we mostly fish 8-14 feet of water in the back of bays jigging and throwing hard baits for walleye and pike, in the last ten years our smallmouth catch has greatly increased. Would anyone like to throw any pointers at me for Late July. I am not looking for spots just patterns. Thanks for any help.

I’d head out of the bays and work deeper, main lake structure. Since you know which bays hold fish earlier in the season, I’d try to find deeper structure adjacent to those bays. Deep, rocky points that go out into the main lake, islands or humps out in front of em, that sort of stuff.

we were up last year late july stayed at gold pines the fish seemed to be in 20ft or more of water on the points around the small islands there seemed to be more fish future down the lake the farthest we went down was steam boat that area was the best for us.

The fishing generally doesn’t get any easier… as mentioned above, fish the wind, looking for cups, points, humps, islands, etc. 20 – 30 feet of water seems to be the most targeted depth, but on the wind blown stuff we caught fish in to the low teens too. We stay at Mahkwa and are going to fish more to the NE (we’re still 20 miles SW from Chamberlain Narrows, I’m thinking) this year after fish the past going west to the central part of the lake. Good Luck, any other questions, just ask as I think TMF’s ideas are sound and mcrew seems to know that side…

Mark

The previous advice of going deeper off mainland and island points is spot-on. Also, finding reefs topping out at 20 to 35 feet and surrounded by deeper water can be a real bonanza. We used to go late July to late August, staying at Lost Island or Lac Seul resort, both just out of Hudson,and came to learn that the later in the season you go, the deeper the fish. Doesn’t mean that you won’t catch some shallower, but they tend to school deeper. While our group resists trolling bottom bouncers like the plague, we did learn that it’s a good way of covering deep water to find the schools, and then bring out the jigs.

Back in 2011, we started fishing a different part of the system, staying at Mahkwa one time, and then Makoon just down the road since then. But now we go for two weeks, starting on the opener, and the program is pitching plastics into shallow water, 2 to 5 feet for pre-spawn and spawn, and sliding out deeper for post-spawn. Only use live bait on the dead-calm, sunny warm days, which are rare in May. Gold Pines has been our place-to-go relief valve for a few days if the ice is not out yet at Makoon, which has happened twice now since 2011. Nice hosts.

Thanks for all the advice, we have always gone gold pines they are great. The one time I went in July I was 8 and the the smallmouth population wasn’t what it is now so I am hoping that if things are a little slow for walleye we can switch to pike and smallmouth to keep my 8 year olds interest. Walleye will definitely still be our main interest.

I can only imagine that trying to fish for SMB or pike will be an attempt to fight boredom from the walleye population is continually biting… While I say that there are days you can’t do it right as evidenced by fishing right next to our partner boat and watching him catch a pair of 29’s while we couldn’t hook a fish, let alone a large one, we were so close we were pushing off his boat… We finally found a pod of fish that we could pound on for a while just before and after a T-storm pushed us off the lake.

Mark