Lake Vermilion rookie

Hello IDO. Anyone have any luck out here on opener? I’ve been out here for 3 days and haven’t found any walleyes or crappies yet. Anyone care to throw me a bone??

Need more information. What side of the lake are you on? Big difference between east end/Big Bay and the west side. I would think shallower this time of year with a jig and minnow should work. Pike Bay is good in the spring, but you’ll have lots of competition.

It’s been a tough bite from what I witnessed over the weekend. Fish are scattered in various depths. We had our best luck on a lindy rig with a fathead/rainbow. Most of the fish we caught came out of 20-30ft water. Definitely missed more fish than we caught, but did manage to get a 3 man limit of some nice keepers, lots of small ones thrown back too. Go find a wind blow point, next down area. These spots will hold fish. If you’re not catching/marking fish move on to the next spot. Don’t be afraid to try spots where no one is fishing. We did our best on a spot where there were no other boats in sight.

Staying at Polley’s resort near Wakemup Bay.

Cross the narrows from McKinley park-get so close to the rocks your nervous about scratching your boat…actually, do this near any submerged rocks you can find

Thank you guys for the input!!

Fish the shallow rocks out of stuntz Bay. Walleyes are thick in there. 6 to 8 ft of water. Bobber and leech

Week after next I’ll be up there for my first time, staying at the Casino.

Any pointers for the middle of June? Not that this year is normal, freezing last week and pushing a 100 this coming weekend by the sounds of it.

cal74 wrote:

Week after next I’ll be up there for my first time, staying at the Casino.

Any pointers for the middle of June? Not that this year is normal, freezing last week and pushing a 100 this coming weekend by the sounds of it.

Humps and reefs in Big Bay should be good to go! There are some good ones south of Potato Island, short drive from casino. Look for 15-20′, find fish, catch fish, good luck!!!

Agree with Dave. Use your electronics. When you find fish that time of year they will generally bite. Guessing crawlers will be the ticket by then.

Search the flats outside of moose island and drop jigs. During opener they were sitting directly on the bottom, almost impossible to find unless you’re really good with down imaging.

Thanks all, appreciate it.

Migrated here from HSO because that’s more of a social forum now than a fishing one, so I might as well share more info with you.

Mid June should be really good. You’re going to see a lot of people fishing deep all the time. You can do that and it can work, but my advice is if you fish a spot-deep spots in particular-and catch 3 or 4 small walleyes, move. When you find a spot and catch a better sized walleye there will tend to be more of that size around.

Don’t be afraid to go shallow. During low light periods of course but check out the moon charts and don’t hesitate to try a bobber and leech right on top of the reefs in the middle of the day if that’s when the high activity times are. You can always catch walleyes shallow on vermilion at some time of the day, and they usually run larger than the average fish.

SoDakangler wrote:

Migrated here from HSO because that’s more of a social forum now than a fishing one, so I might as well share more info with you.

Mid June should be really good. You’re going to see a lot of people fishing deep all the time. You can do that and it can work, but my advice is if you fish a spot-deep spots in particular-and catch 3 or 4 small walleyes, move. When you find a spot and catch a better sized walleye there will tend to be more of that size around.

Don’t be afraid to go shallow. During low light periods of course but check out the moon charts and don’t hesitate to try a bobber and leech right on top of the reefs in the middle of the day if that’s when the high activity times are. You can always catch <em class=”ido-tag-em”>walleyes shallow on vermilion at some time of the day, and they usually run larger than the average fish.

when I was about 12-13 yrs old, before my family bought a place on Big Bay, we stayed at Everetts. Someone had tried all week to catch a walleye, and eventually, they hired a guide that got them on some 14-15” fish.

i went out by myself at sunset and came back in carrying three 16-19” fish in under an hour on that 5’ deep rock piles just past the island outside Everetts Bay

Their jaws dropped, priceless

Will walleyes be found shallow (10ft or less) throughout July as well? Also, I’m curious if there are some nice weedlines in the lake that hold walleyes in summer?

with wind or low light, sure. if you shine a light along the shore at night, you will see crawfish and lots of food pushed tight to shore.

there isnt much for weedlines and and pike, musky and bass are more likely to be found there. but im sure walleye can be had there as well

Ok, that’s good to know. This will be our first family trip/vaca ever to this lake. We did Kab/Nam last year and after a couple days of searching and figuring things out we found some decent fishing.

Does Vermilion fish much like Kab for walleyes?

Weekender wrote:

Ok, that’s good to know. This will be our first family trip/vaca ever to this lake. We did Kab/Nam last year and after a couple days of searching and figuring things out we found some decent fishing.

Does Vermilion fish much like Kab for walleyes?

I have always fished the east side of vermillion, and typically had good success. Slip bobbering shallow in the evening and morning, or throwing stick baits in that area as well. This is bends of islands in between islands, rock piles, and shallow rocky bays. In the day time you can do all sorts of stuff. Some days it’s good other days it’s tough. The fish roam out there I have noticed. Turns in to a searching game.

Last year I fished the west side for a week 2 different times and only had 3 days of really good fishing. Was definitely a different bite. Mid early July all fish were 20 ft plus deep and caught using a few different techniques. I couldn’t find any shallower fish, and I searched. It was also very warm out side at that time. I love that lake it is beautiful challenging and endless.

we are heading up in a few days, mayflies in full force? any other bite updates of smallies and or walleyes?
thanks!

Bearcat89 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Weekender wrote:</div>
Ok, that’s good to know. This will be our first family trip/vaca ever to this lake. We did Kab/Nam last year and after a couple days of searching and figuring things out we found some decent fishing.

Does Vermilion fish much like Kab for walleyes?

I have always fished the east side of vermillion, and typically had good success. Slip bobbering shallow in the evening and morning, or throwing stick baits in that area as well. This is bends of islands in between islands, rock piles, and shallow rocky bays. In the day time you can do all sorts of stuff. Some days it’s good other days it’s tough. The fish roam out there I have noticed. Turns in to a searching game.

Last year I fished the west side for a week 2 different times and only had 3 days of really good fishing. Was definitely a different bite. Mid early July all fish were 20 ft plus deep and caught using a few different techniques. I couldn’t find any shallower fish, and I searched. It was also very warm out side at that time. I love that lake it is beautiful challenging and endless.

Thanks for the info bearcat. Sounds like we’ll need to keep on the move. Seems from the reading I’ve done that this is how the lake fishes. Catch a couple and move. Probably need to keep a watchful eye on the electronics too. I know on Kab last year we wouldn’t even wet a line unless we were graphing fish.

Weekender wrote:

Will walleyes be found shallow (10ft or less) throughout July as well? Also, I’m curious if there are some nice weedlines in the lake that hold walleyes in summer?

One thing I would keep in mind is that shallow is relative. Lots of reefs on the east end top out at 15-20 feet. I would consider any top like that shallow compared to water around it. Especially the ones that have 40+ feet around them. I’ve caught lots of walleyes on top of reefs in late June and early august so I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t be there in July too.

There are weeds on the west end that people claim to catch fish out of all summer. But that’s just hearsay on my end.

Taking a little closer look at the contours…. is it possible to get through the Oak Narrows area? Seems that it gets awfully shallow through there.

Weekender wrote:

Taking a little closer look at the contours…. is it possible to get through the Oak Narrows area? Seems that it gets awfully shallow through there.

Unless something has changed in the last few years, you can get through there. Most of the narrow areas like this will have bouys for navigation.

I’m up here now and Sat/Sun held good production trolling shallow cranks (2-6′) along rocky shores on the east end, anywhere from Seven Sisters to Armstrong Bay. Eyes are often small but 14-20″ have been found in fair numbers and one 23.5″ throw back.

After the Sunday evening rain, it’s been much tougher locating the bite on the east end. Lake flies are plentiful.

I’ll give my report. We stayed Friday night – Tuesday night in a VRBO on Everts Bay. Fished Friday night and found fish in 14’ in the couple hours we fished. Saturday and Sunday were tough fishing for us, couldn’t find fish anywhere hardly. Fished shallow, deep, rocks, shorelines. Unlike the poster above, we didn’t pull cranks shallow but rather pitched jigs and we wouldn’t get that bite going ever. Never caught one fish on a jig shallow.

Tuesday was our best day even in the flat calm conditions. Got a 22,23,24,24 in 17-20’. Not a lot of fish but some size. The bigger fish definitely wanted minnows on Lindy rigs.

It was our first time on the lake and we enjoyed it. Gave us some challenges but that’s to be expected especially with the water temps as warm as they are for this time of year.

How is the pike fishing on this lake? I’m not necessarily talking giants. Just pike in general. My nephew is coming on this trip and his favorite thing is to cast for pike. He’ll mostly be with my folks in their boat, but I’ll take him out a few times early morning to cast.

Weekender wrote:

How is the <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>pike fishing on this lake? I’m not necessarily talking giants. Just <em class=”ido-tag-em”>pike in general. My nephew is coming on this trip and his favorite thing is to cast for pike. He’ll mostly be with my folks in their boat, but I’ll take him out a few times early morning to cast.

We catch a ton of pike and nice thick quality pike at that, while targeting smallmouth. Especially because I seen your on the west side. Go up and play around all the bays near shamrock landing. Lots of great fishing to be done

Thanks for the info Bearcat! Shamrock might be a little bit of a hike from Whispering Winds, but it looks like there’s a lot of similar bays from Norwegian on over to Wolf Island. We may venture over toward the Shamrock area if need be though.

6 days and counting! I just entered about 40 waypoints on my sonar to look at when we’re up there. Don’t know if we’ll get to all of them, but most I suspect.

stillakid2 wrote:

I’m up here now and Sat/Sun held good production trolling shallow cranks (2-6′) along rocky shores

Stillakid….

When you say trolling shallow cranks (2-6′)…. do you mean in 2′ to 6′ of water? Or cranks that dive down 2′ to 6′ deep when trolled?

Has anybody been out recently? We are heading up for Friday for some Labor Day fishing. Gonna be a quick trip, but looking forward to it! I’m guessing the fishing will be different than it was June. The weather looks like it’s going to be a nice break from the heat we have had in Iowa!

Thanks