I had a chance to get on the water with my good friend Bill Raveling today.Bill helped me ALOT when I first started to fish for walleyes.Man have I came along way from those early years of trying to just get a few walleyes to bite.We got to the boat ramp around 6:00 a.m. and had a huge thunderstorm come through the area on us.Scott Reed from Purefishing called and we went out for breakfast and caught up on old times while the storm passed.
Once we got on the water we tried to slip-bobber fish but it was not working at all.I think the heavy lighting/thunder and rain had the fish out of the shallow and out in the deeper water.Bill and I rigged livebait while my son Austin rotated between jigging and a bouncer/spinner set-up.Here is Austin with a nice 16" eye caught off a jig and leech.
We had a perfect wind and were on some active fish but the wind stopped and so did the bite.It went from great to very slow.Here is another legal eye I caught before the wind stopped.
After a few minutes to get our gear ready we started to troll bouncer/spinner set-ups and crankbaits.We changed crankbaits many times and tried to find a good combo but nothing seemed to be the "hot hardbait".We did catch a few fish off of crankbaits but one of the bouncer spinner set-ups was getting bit 10-1 on our other baits.It was a silver hammered blade with green and black stripes on it.I did not have a extra blade with because I left all my blades back in my boat.We tried many different blade colors and styles but the fish only wanted this certain color.Isn’t it funny how that works at times?Overall it was a fun day to get back on the water with Bill.We do not get a chance to fish together very much anymore so it was nice to talk and fish for a day.Here is Austin with a 17.5" smallie he caught off a #5 wally diver.
Ryan Hale