Opener reports

Any success on opening weekend? We got a few, definitely a bit slower than other years, tons and tons of boats out there, never saw too many rods being bent.

Not as great as last year but still had decent success. Unreal the number of boats out there!! It was an absolute zoo in some areas on the north end sand almost could walk 1/4 mile from boat to boat it seemed. For the number of boats vs. number of fish caught and seen caught I’d imagine most would say it was an ok opener. Lots of sorting to find the needle in the haystack keeper walleye but managed to find one and released. “One less to count against the quota (DNR)!”

Started out Sat AM on Breakers. 3 nice smallies right away pitching/dragging jig/minnow. No eyes after the first hour so we went on the move. Lot of boats on most spots by then. Headed north to the sand. And yeah, lot of boats. Stayed out a little deeper and as far away from others as possible. Decent bite 3-4 fish an hour. No keeper slots. Then it just got way out of hand with boats running on half plane zig-zagging though the crowds. One came way too close for comfort. Scare the crap out of me! Got out of there! We headed back in about 1pm as the wind layed down. Smallies on Sun for a few hours. Nice to be back on the lake!

-J.

I did pretty well from 7:30 PM Saturday until Sunday morning to 5:30 AM 32 walleyes the vast majority came after 10:30 PM after most boats had left. We did get a couple rock bass in the middle of the night. Those were the first rock bass I have seen bite in the dark. Wow were there a lot of boats when we got there about 7PM.

Too much traffic for me to be out there at night! Yeah, getting old or maybe smarter? Searching the news this morning I’m not seeing any reports of boat crashes. Hope everyone made it off safe. Remember, lake is down a good foot. Keep the prop out of the rocks!!

-J.

First opener on the pond in years. Two of us caught 87 during the day on opener. Biggest 23, kept our two. Maybe a couple others that were keepable. Jigs and shiners. Lots of boats. Fish scattered once boat traffic got high. Staying out of the main pack was key. North Sand.

We did ok. I took my kids out for a few hours Saturday afternoon/evening. We caught a few fish in the north sand, but navigating around all those boats while trying to keep an eye on a 4 and 5 year old made me pretty nervous, so we didn’t stay out long. We tried the southeast part of the lake Sunday morning. No where near as many boats, but I didn’t mark any fish either. I’m hoping to be back up there this weekend!

I only got over there once this year. Midnight to 3:30AM Saturday morning. Caught one 20-incher on a Rippin Rap. Had probably 10 other bites, 3 of which hooked up and got off. Two other guys out there got 13 between them including 3 they could have kept. At about 12:20 I backlashed sending my X-Rap into the lake. That spun me out a little bit. I went from fishing to trying to catch my lure, which I did eventually do around 2:30AM. I was too keyed up. The fish wanted a slow vanilla retrieve this year, no pause.

I think our final tally was 50 in the north sand. Didn’t seem to matter what we threw at them, as long as it was far away from the boat. Plastics, jig and minnow, lindy rig and minnow, lindy rig and leech, bobber and leech. Our best fishing was at dusk with a boober and leech. We marked several fish up 3 feet off of the bottom and set the bobbers accordingly. We were catching a fish every 3 to 4 minutes, but my brother in law was scared about putting his boat on the lift in the dark, so we left!!! I get it, it’s his boat, but had we stayed I don’t think we would’ve ever stopped catching them. Gotta buy him a lantern or something. A lot of boats around us weren’t catching them at the rate we were at the end of the night. Some were using bobbers as well, but most were pitching jigs. I wonder if being higher up in the water column made that big of a difference???? Everybody could see what we were doing, but nobody switched to what we were doing.

I forgot to add we caught 5 over the slot, 2 within a quarter inch under the slot, and 2 in the slot. Biggest was 25.

Caught plenty of fish and seen lots of boats. Staying away from them was key for us or at least key to my sanity. Didn’t bother with the north end sand. Had similar results to above post. Didn’t count but seemed like a normal opener except for the weather. Rigs jigs cranks and bobbers all caught fish.

Crazy how varied the reports are, though it seems most if not all did some catching. Also, some of you guys are pretty nonchalant about having what many would consider the day of a lifetime… 30 to 80 walleyes in a day? Phew!