Late Fall Walleye in Deep Lakes w/Cisco – Skunked!?

Hello, spent last three days fishing in the park rapids area and got skunked and I don’t understand why. Really confused because I couldn’t find many arcs on the graph. Would really appreciate some insight!

Lakes: Blue and Lower Bottle – Hubbard County. Deep holes (100’+) with steep breaks to shallow sandy shorelines. Large cisco / tullibee schools could be seen on the graph in the 60+ ft depths. Very clear water clarity.
Water Temp: 46 degrees
Weather: Cloudy and windy, 44 degrees

Tried 12′ – 50′ with live bait rigs and 5″ creek chubs. Spent a fair amount of time at the transition from rock to mud which was at about 40 feet. Points in and inside curves right along the tullibee schools. Tried trolling crankbaits along the break. First shallow on one side and a deep lip combo on the other in 8′ to 15′ of water. Then deep with lead core (25′ to 40′). Stayed out past dark one night trolling cranks.

Like I said I was never able to locate a good number of arcs. The few spots I found 2 – 3 arcs – one at 28′ that looked promising – I didn’t get any hits. The only thing I didn’t try was shallow – 5′ and under. Lower bottle has a lot of reeds along the edges. Is it possible that’s where the walleye where?

This was my first try of late fall Walleye and I’d like to figure it out. Any insight or experience would be very much appreciated!

Did you try trolling at night? I know with clear deep lakes alot of the times the walleyes will suspend over deeper water with the ciscos and the best way to target them is at night trolling cranks. were there any rock with patchy cabbage in the lake? i found this weekend that alot of the walleyes we caught were in scattered rock with patchy cabbage weed or weeds that just started to lay down.

I spend a week up there in June. The lake has a great population of walleyes in it. Unfortunately after the spring shallow bite dies off it can be tough to find the fish. fortunately, you can always find fish in the weeds. When I say weeds I mean deep cabbage(8-16′). A jig and minnow, pulling spinners or rigging chubs through the weeds works well. Also fish the steep breaks with jigging raps. Sidescan really helps locate these fish as they are sucked tight to bottom most of the time and are really hard to find on 2D. pitch up to the weed edge and work it back into 30′.

Hope this helps.

We did good on a deep clear lake using jigging raps on weed lines that still had green weeds, did not get one bite rigging or jigging, everything came on jigging raps. Find the green weeds with baitfish. Everything I marked deep was not active

Great info! Thanks!! Fishing the weeds makes a lot of sense. What doesn’t make sense is why I didn’t try I have the gear! I’ll be up again Oct 27th I’ll report how it goes.