Mid August Report

I wasn’t on the Pond this past weekend. We had a family reunion at my uncles cabin more over towards Brainerd. It was special because it was the first time the family has gotten together since my Dad, my Grandma, and my Grandpa all passed away this past year and it was originally my grandparents cabin.

Anyway…… I will be going back up this coming weekend with my kids and just wondering if the patterns from a couple weeks ago have changed at all? Last time up we were still getting them on the mud and deep breakline / basin areas but it had slowed down some. Also, is that nasty bug hatch over?

Thanks,

I think/hope the last of the bugs hatched out now and we should be in the clear. I did see some on top of the water Sunday but no clouds of them coming up.

I can’t tell you about the mud because I stayed in on the rocks again and did pretty well on smallie and got a few bonus walleyes mixed in at sunset.

Decided to spend yesterday basin trolling tail dancers. Took about an hour and half before finding a decent school. Fish were still pretty low. Went 20-23 in 8 hours of trolling, speed that triggered bites was 3-3.4MPH. Couldn’t get a bite at 2MPH. No giants, a couple in the 26-27 range.

I still have not had to go to trolling this year (my backup plan cause I just don’t enjoy it as much). I rigged the deep edges of mud flats; my wife and I put over 50 eyes in the boat in about 6 hours of fishing, 3 hours midday and another 3 from 6-9. Biggest was 25 with many 19-21. Need to get out to the rocks like sticker and enjoy some smallies, just been hard to leave the eyes this year.

I can confirm Matt’s strategy. My folks have been using lead core in deep water and that is still producing the most fish. Gotta keep the speed up though, just like he said. This is day time strategy too. You could probably still catch some fish in shallower water towards sunset using another tactic.

Wife and found a bunch in 18-21’ on the edge of a rock reef last week. Couldn’t believe how many fish I was marking.

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Well, the fish were in the same general area where we left them a couple of weeks ago. On Friday I drove around until I saw fish on the graph and me and my two kids had a great time.

On Saturday, went to the same spot but couldn’t hold anchor. There were some rollers and huge swells out there. I tried for 20 minutes and two different anchors. Oh well. Ended up taking the kids in shallower and caught some trolling around with #9 shad raps

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We were up battling the wind. Some of those rollers had to be 4 ft. Fishing was good. We looked for smallies but couldnt keep the walleyes off the line. Never fished anything deeper then 15 ft. Mostly tried to stay in 10 to 12. Lots of walleyes

Bearcat89 wrote:

We were up battling the wind. Some of those rollers had to be 4 ft.

That’s what I was thinking too. At least up on the north end.

lindyrig79 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Bearcat89 wrote:</div>
We were up battling the wind. Some of those rollers had to be 4 ft.

That’s what I was thinking too. At least up on the north end.

Yeah I fished malmo area and it was some rough water. My boat cant handle anything more then that.

We were on the mud. Pretty slow for us. Got a few to go. Rigging got all the fish. Switched to cranks when the rigging bite died and didn’t get anything pulling cranks.

Ditto on trolling the basin area. Pretty slow….

-J.

I had a tough time catching fish in the shallows this weekend. I didn’t fish a ton because of the wind and other factors, but I was marking a lot of fish and not able to get them to bite. By far my slowest weekend so far this summer.

Basin was a little tougher in the waves Saturday. Still pulled off 12 fish in 8 hours, with a 28 incher to end the day. All on Taildancers except for one on a BX Swimmer on 5 colors of lead. Bait was way more spread out than the Saturday before, which made the walleyes spread out too.

Tough weekend, Definitely my worst of the season, boat control was a bear, and even when I was on them I had a hard time getting them to bite. Ended up with about 12 fish total, most came Sat. Night at dusk.

You guys should try shallow. We had 12 fish the first hour I believe and nothing came from deeper then 15 ft. But didnt put many hours in due to the wind.