Winnibigosh Report

I know most reports from Winnibigosh have been of a tough bite, so I hears some good news. My Dad and I just got from 2 days of prefishing and 2 days of tournament fishing in the MTT event. While prefishing we tried everything from shallow weeds in 8 feet out to open water trolling in 40 feet. We primarily trolled to cover water prefishing and caught one here and there with only 2 keepers over 2 days. On the tournament days we slowed down and worked the edge of a sand flat in 13-15 feet pulling spinners. Both days we caught around 15 fish and over the 2 days we had 18 keeper-sized fish. There were other boats in this area and they were getting keeper fish too. Each day we did troll on another hump for awhile and picked up a couple keepers and fish up to 20 inches. There were about 20 limits each day, so overall the bite was much better than 2 weeks ago.

I should point out that if you are just looking for action, trolling along weed edges in 12-15 feet will keep you busy with Perch, Perch, Northerns, and Walleyes in that order.

@Bigfife

Thanks for the Winnie report, Fife. I heard the bite had been down right brutal up there in the weeks leading up to your trip.

I’ve always wondered about the open basin trolling bite on Winnie. You mentioned you gave that bite some time during pre-fishing. Did you get any fish to go out trolling deep? I would assume there would be a basin bite on Winnie very similar to what can be found on Mille Lacs but I’ve never heard of anyone actually trying it.

We didn’t catch any fish in the open basin. There is an incredible amount of bait in the lake especially in the open basin. We tried it off and on over 4 days with several types of crankbaits. It’s hard to say that the larger marks were Walleyes, but it seems like we marked more fish closer to the flats. We did catch a few nice perch on Deep Taildancers in the basin.