I don’t see to many reports for North Dakota on here so I thought I’d throw one in.
This past weekend I really felt the need to hit the water again after a two week hiatus. Unfortunately the wind was howling around 25-30 MPH, as it often does out here on the prairie, so I wasn’t about to take my boat on my usual larger bodies of water like Oahe or Sakakawea and battle the waves all day long, but I also wasn’t going to take no for an answer. So a friend I headed out for a smaller body of water in the Prairie Pot Hole region of North Dakota.
We hit the water around Mid-Day trolling cranks in 10-14 FOW with limited success. So we moved up shallower, 8-10 FOW pulling Tail Dancers and Jointed Shad Raps. Eventually, we found ourselves on the wind blown side of a main lake point with some vegetation. The weed line here was right at about 7-8 FOW so we skirted up close. Here we had out first strike, a 25 inch walleye. A minute or two farther down the point, a 23 incher. We finally found our pattern so we kept working the point and chaos ensued. The point was stacked with fish, walleyes and pike. We boated a lot of fish, mostly pike. However the walleyes we did catch were in the quality department with most in the 20-23 inch range and one 27 incher. Larger fish were coming on the Tail Dancers.
As the day kept on the wind died to almost nothing in the last couple hours of sunlight. Unfortunately, so did the walleye bite so we decided to switch things up and use the trolling motor to try to work the point over slower with jigs and Rippin Raps. We were working the very end of the point in 10-12 FOW, adjacent to the deepest part of the lake. Here the Rippin Rap was a hit, the walleyes and pike were eating them up. At one point, we had walleyes on four casts in a row. Our day was able to keep rolling until dusk.
A couple presentations really brought us our success, but ultimately being willing to adapt to the conditions and change tactics and not stay locked in on one presentation throughout the day kept the fish coming in the boat.
Good luck out there!
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