Hoping to take advantage of the full moon bite I did some trolling this past week. The bite is definitely on and I had no problem boating fish. I did however have problems with getting the boat out, and had each outing cut short after getting blown off besides Thursday. I moved around quite a bit in order to hit the part of the lake least effected by the high winds.
Sunday the 23rd: fished out of Malmo for two hours early morning before calling it. I had to up my trolling speed to over 4mph just to have any boat control at all. I felt pretty good about catching five with the biggest of the week also being the first—a fat 26.” Three of the five were what I refer to as “dinks.” These 11″ to 12″ walleyes were very abundant. I hadn’t caught any of these guys trolling this year until this week. I’ve boated some live bait rigging but I predominately troll so I haven’t seen nearly the amount of this class of fish as others have. I knew they were present but it wasn’t until this week I found out they were abundant.
Monday the 24th: My little brother was visiting from out of state and we were able to get out for a little bit in the afternoon. We launched from the North Garrison landing around 3pm and tried hitting just off rocky structure. We went down to the reef and worked our way back but were blown off. It was like someone flipped a switch and the wind picked up and it started raining and we were off the water right at 5pm, so we fished maybe an hour and a half after spending the first 30 minutes trying to locate fish. We caught four walleyes (two dinks) with the biggest going 24.5,” and also got a smallie.
Tuesday the 25th: The wind brought in colder air. I was able to troll for about four hours midday before getting blown off, which at that point I was happy with that much time going the right speed in a decent line. Fishing was slow. I caught two walleyes (21″ & 19″) and a decent perch.
I spent most of Wednesday helping my dad with a house project (replacing a window that turned into a whole lot more due to there being some water damage). We hit the Garrison South landing and launched at 6pm. My little sister and brother-in-law joined us. We caught four in just under an hour before heading through some of the biggest rollers (almost “swells”) I’ve experienced on ML. Biggest fish was only 20″ but it was double tagged, and got an 18.5″ an 18″ and one dink.
Thursday the 27th: I launched from the public landing just North of the Casino at 6:30am and fished until noon. I boated 12 walleyes, four of which were dinks. The biggest fish went 21.5″ and there was two the same length (you could’ve swore they were twins!), then a 20″ 19.5″ 19″ 18″ 17″ 16″ and three smallies, and a tiny perch I caught at the end with a small jig and a piece of a crawler trying to figure out what baitfish I was marking.
Take-aways from the week: There were better colors than others each day, but not for the week. Every day seemed like one would be a little better than the others…obviously also being harder to have one emerge when you’re fishing limited amounts of time and not catching that many fish. Thursday was the only day that felt like a real outing where I was able to fish how I wanted instead of the wind largely influencing where I was going and lines I was making. That day flicker minnows were really working, purple especially.
I did some leadcore but long-lining mono with a snapweight caught more fish. On Thursday I was letting out 250′ of line.
I tried various types of structure and lake bottom and what I ended up going back to each time to catch fish was 22′ to 23′ of water over sand out in the middle of nowhere. I tried going smallow over rocks, around the reefs, off the deep boulder break, I even hit a couple flats to see what was going on out there….always ended up going back to sand. I’d locate a school of baitfish out in the middle of a bay not next to anything and then start catching fish, often before ever marking them. I’ve gotten bad about saving a waypoint when I get a fish but did pretty good on Thursday. I went back across a bay and noticed I was approaching where I’d already caught a fish and tried going right over it and got another, and then did that again later….so three of my fish including one of the 21.5″s came from going over that same exact spot, that showed absolutely nothing but flat sandy bottom on the graph.
It was a fun week, often cold and really windy. I would have liked to have spent more time on the water….I never did get out under the full moon…but it was fun.
