Fished starting Saturday afternoon on 7/23 thru the following Friday. I have fished Rainy 1 time in early August (last summer) and fish it every year in early October so I have some knowledge of the lake and places to begin.
That said, we had a tough week finding keeper sized walleyes. We spent the majority of our time east of the Brule, but also fished a couple spots west of the Brule going out each morning and coming back in the evening. There were a lot of boats on many reefs on both sides of the Brule. We spent a lot of time jigging and pulling lindy rigs, both ways produced similar results. Sometimes the jig/minnow was the ticket other times they preferred leeches. It seemed like when they wanted leeches, they would also hit crawlers over minnows
The bright side is about 40% of the fish caught were walleyes in the protected slot with most being 20″ to 23″. The down side was the overall quantity of fish was down from past experiences (although a couple spots if we got consistent little ones, we would move on after 30min or so)
Im headed back up for 4 days of fishing in early October. With the fishing pressure going down after Labor Day, maybe the bite will be better by October. Im sure the walleyes are getting sick of dodging jig heads everywhere
