Went down to P4 Thursday afternoon with Eric (cougareye) to try and pick up a big walleye that we’ve seen pics of on here. The plan was to pitch until our arms fell off, I wanted to do it because I’ve never been succesful at and there is no better way to learn than to just try it.
We were going to use cranks, plastics and maybe even blades, we kept hearing about blades but neither of us had any luck with them in the past. While in the bait shop at Everts we noticed the rack of blades looked pretty bare but Steve pointed us in the direction of what worked for him the night before and Eric had to get a few. I was able to resist because they have never worked before and I already had enough dead weight in my box.
We decided to head south and work our way back up. We started near the head of Pepin and started working spots on the way back with limited success. Eric was able to find a nice school of white bass and I think he could have stayed there all night but I pressed him to keep us moving (and I wasn’t catching them). So far I was only using cranks with no luck and Eric was going through everything, even blades with not much luck either.
Finally we were almost back to where we started Eric told me to try the blade while he was pitching plastic. I figured why not, I wasn’t having much luck anyway. I started pitching like Steve said and it seemed to be working OK when I actually hooked a fish…WTH. The bait came out in the net so I couldn’t tell if the fish actually bit it or was snagged in the head, it was a fat 20″ eye. I told Eric 1 fish is a fluke, it would take another to prove that these things can work. A short time later I had another good hit, this one was better this time and put up a good fight, this one measured 26″.
The second one just inhaled the blade and had 1 hook on the edge of a gill. She bled quite a bit even though it was just on the edge but hopefully she makes it, she swam away good up current.
It turned out to be a perfect night for fishing but we couldn’t get anything going after dark, Eric even donated 1 of his new blades to a tree. I heard others did very good after dark so I need to find out what we need to do differently after dark.
Overall a great night on the water, my first 2 eyes on blades (thanks Eric, I guess I should have bought some). Also a big thanks to Everts and Steve for the help. 
