Walleyes in the Willows….

Aight……will someone please give me the skinny on this so called “Pattern” for high water walleye’s on lake pepin

I casted my off both saturday and sunday…..fished form the head of the lake to lacpolis, MN and WIS sides……….With nothing to show for my efforts (other than this extreemly painful sunburn on the top of my right forearm )

So what’s the deal? What’s the best type of lure/technique? Color? Why are certain willows better than others? Does time of day matter?

I saw tons off guys doing it both days, so I know there must be something to this……Then again, it’s entirely possible that I don’t know what the heck I’m talking about

Were you shore fishing? Were your lures bumpin’ bottom on the retrieve?

I was casting as far up into them as possible and draggin it back out…….tried both jigs and cranks

PS……Aaron, you better not being replying with some smart comment

Jake,
I thought we showed you on sunday. You take the crank bait tie it to the end of your line and cast , not just to the willows but all a round them.
No seriously, Some spots held fish and others didn’t. Now if you would have listen to your boss on the locations or if you would ask him I am sure next time you’ll do fine.
Aaron

Yeah, I can’t offer you much advice, since I’ve never fished pepin, It’s possible the fish were just not there, but I do think you need to toss something the will run deep enough to bump bottom. The fish I’ve heard of on the river have been shallower. Don’t be afraid to ask the others out there too, personally I’ll share way, way more info out on a spot with someone then, I’d ever give up elsewhere. I’d help you more if I could. Sorry

Jake,
I forgot to mention thermacare or flexdal 454 is commonly used for sore muscles. I have used it after cathing all those fish, but in your case it will work for casting all the time oh and sun block.
Here are some keys that you can try next time.
1. Look for carp, This seems wierd, but I have seen this every time I am on the spots with walleye. A theroy that one of the club members said ” that the walleyes are in there eating the carp spawn” I don’t know how true this is.
2. In the dark and stained waters that we have right now we used the blue and chrome and fire tiger colors. Any thing that would give off a flash or is bright colored work.
3. We started off using #5 shad raps and found that the water was higher than normal, so we swithed up to #7. Try to keep the cranks in side the 2 foot range off the bottm. I picked up the Rapala trolling and casting guide to figure out what would work the best.
4. During low light conditions (like yesturday morning) we found the fish in shallow water less than 2ft, but as the clouds broke up and the sun hit with out wind the fish moved in the same area in 5-7 ft, but as the winners said ” as the wind came up the area they fished turned on again” throughing cranks into shallow water.
Jake I hope this helps.
Aaron

we were fishing pool 5 sat. and sun. and tried casting cranks and caught a few fish, exactly 3, the rest came from trolling the same spots with cranks and we caught 30-40 fish each day. we also were using #5 & 7 jointed shad raps in firetiger, firecraw, and red craw. our best lure was a #4 gold/black shadrap. we were just bumping bottom on the troll and caught all our fish in 4-7′ of water. also the fish were scattered, we would catch one or two and then nothing, move to another likely looking spot and catch zip, move again and catch one or two and so on. we could come back to previous “hot” spots and again pick up one or two. we noticed that the cleaner the water the better the bite and the less current the better, although there had to be some current. hope this helps?!?

Hello Jake. I will throw in my 2 cents. My partner & I were fortunate enough to have good success yesterday but I certainly don’t have all of the answers. Initially we thoroughly worked a stretch of shoreline with no wind casting to the willows with # 5 Shad Raps with a straight retreive but only managed to catch 1 14″ walleye for our efforts. However, once the wind picked up out of the NW we caught numbers of fish casting this same shoreline as before with # 5 Shad Raps. Best colors were Perch Glass, regular perch, and any # 5 shad rap with a little blue on them. Glass Perch was the best color however. My advice would be to try casting shorelines that you know hold fish and are being hit by the wind. Hope this helps.

EyesHaveIt

Wind is one of the key factors to this pattern. Get a good wind blowing into a known fish holding area and you’ll score big. Sunday (yesterday) I fished with Dave Olsen and his 2 son-in-laws from Owatonna and we had a field day with this pattern… and the wind in the afternoon was the switch that turned the fish on. Small deep divers are usually the best baits… shad raps, bombers and grapplers. Sunny days I’ve done well with firetiger of late and on cloudy days darker patterns produce big fish in my boat. Some days the rate of retrieve makes a big difference so experimentation there is in order to match the mood of the day. I’ve tried slip bobbers and bait, jigs n’ bait and plastics/ hair jigs and not been able to duplicate the catch we’re getting on the cranks. But that can change from one day to the next. I’ve had it go the other direction when a hair jig caught gobs of fish but they ignored cranks.

The area from Bogus to Deer Is. has been good as well as points further north including Long Pt. and the Maiden Rock area. I’ve not fished further south than that.

We ended up with 7 fish over 23 inches yesterday (5 fish from 24″ – 26″) with a massive 28″ mama walleye that would have been very welcome the day prior during the IDA walleye tourney…. this pattern sure beats the heck out of trolling any day!

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Aight……will someone please give me the skinny on this so called “Pattern” for high water walleye’s on lake pepin

I casted my off both saturday and sunday…..fished form the head of the lake to lacpolis, MN and WIS sides……….With nothing to show for my efforts (other than this extreemly painful sunburn on the top of my right forearm )

So what’s the deal? What’s the best type of lure/technique? Color? Why are certain willows better than others? Does time of day matter?

I saw tons off guys doing it both days, so I know there must be something to this……Then again, it’s entirely possible that I don’t know what the heck I’m talking about

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Alright……Thanks guys.

It sounds like I was awfully CLOSE to producing some fish. We fished the areas that James mentioned (along with many many other areas)……we fished the windy sides when ever possible……..we found the carp (although I’m still skeptical on that theory )…….we threw smaller sized, brightly colored cranks…….I have to believe that we were CLOSE

So thanks again for the help…..and like James said “This pattern sure beats the heck out of trolling any day! “……..Man do I despise trolling (almost as much I despise having them stinky, slimey, net twisting, tackle theiving toothie buggers in my boat )

I just wish I could “Bass Fish for Walleye” everyday….if ya know what I mean

Jake,

I was at the camp on the Wis. side on sunday and we had a three man limit of willies in 6 drifts. We were the closest boat to the trees and the willows, about 4-6 feet deep, most boats were actually anchored, I couldn’t believe it. Everytime we would catch a fish they would move right in and splash, an anchor. My boat was dragging 1/8 ounce jigs with big leeches turning most fish, but crawlers were also boating some ‘eyes. But watch were you get your leeches, hooked on fishing in roch. had small, med/large and X-large leeches, all seemed to be the same size, with the jumbos being the exception. We bought XL leeches and they might as well had been med.to small, they were tiny, Troys bait in Wabasha had nice ones though. Best colors: orange/chart. and green/chart. Hope that helps.

Well, that’s actually kind of funny! Jake works at HOF and can attest to the fact that the leeches are certainly different sizes. If you are unhappy, please come in for a refund.

Good Fishing,
Mike

Jake…..works…..

What’s a leech???

I would just like to thank you guys again for all the sound advice given about this technique. Using what I learned from this thread and James’s latest report, I was FINALLY able to catch a few decent sized fish casting shallow……Along with my largest river walleye EVER!!!

Man does this site rock or what

Details my good man, details! How big? On what? Those of that didn’t fish today require more!

Caught it on a #5 firetiger shadrap @ 9:45 last night (yeah, it was dark).

Unfortunately, other than that one fish, the action yesterday was quite slow……actually, it was the ONLY walleye to make it to the boat (7hrs of casting). Had one other walleye half way to the boat and missed a couple of followers……But we did end up catching a few Smallies, Whitebass, Sheepies, along with a 33″ toothie

We did much better number wise on thursday…..musta been that front that came through or something

and just a FYI, the trolling guys were picking up quite a few fish but nothing bigger than a foot long hotdog

Geez… that is late. But good for you. Since you did an end around on the “how big” question I’ll assume it was so big you expect none of us to believe you if you told us?!?!

I guess I’ll have to stop down to HOF to get the rest of the story.

Come on Jake, share the details. How big was she??

AKA—-> The Little Turkey [in Jakes own words]

I think the ”little turkey” is keeping secrets from us since he won’t say how big, lol. I hope it was bigger than the ”goldfish” he caught last week. James, he hides out at HOF South most of the time, oh did I give away where he is? [in the afternoons]. Yep Jake, I even found you over here on this forum!

Thanks, Bill

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and just a FYI, the trolling guys were picking up quite a few fish but nothing bigger than a foot long hotdog

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How big is a foot long hot dog?????

Gator Hunter

Hey Jake. The big fish must’ve liked the young guys on Saturday because I also caught my largest walleye ever. 28 inches . Whats the details on your fish. Dont be shy, we’ll believe you .

come on now guys…….I told you…….It was my largest river walleye EVER!!!

That’s detailed enough for me

OK… fair enough. The next time you have a question my answer will be “in the river by a rock on a worm.”

Actually I’m willing to bet I could come down to the shop put you in a headlock and squeeze it out of you…. lol

Keep catchin’ Mr. Jake.

Naaaahhhhhh……I just don’t want anyone to feel TOO incrediably inferior to your’s truely, as I’m obviously in such a highly advanced stage of fish catching ability (just take a look at that steller fish count)……

I say put him in the head-lock and give the old rake the knuckles on his head. Of course there is always the sit on them and poke the sternum until he can’t stand it any longer…..

I think Jake is just scared because the fish was so small and the only reason that it is his larget river walleye ever is because he only catches 14 3/4 inch fish and this one was finally legal!!

ahhhh, but Tony my young friend…….you obviously don’t remember this guy…….