Ottertail County Minnesota Fishing Report 09-23-04

I had a chance to spend a couple days on the water with my father, Joe Kuehl. We ran into a pretty tough bite over the weekend but I’ll provide what information I can and hopefully that will help a few of you catch some fish this coming weekend. We did not do any night fishing so this report will only help those who are looking to be out in the daylight.

We tried chasing walleye with deep running cranks and had no success. However, we were able to find some decent pike so we decided to look for some bigger snakes with a few different baits. The long, thin walleye cranks such as the Wally Minnow in fire tiger worked better than the typical larger, fatter pike cranks. All the pike were found in deep weeds, or just off the weeds in 18 to 30 feet of water.

We were able to hunt up a few walleye trolling live bait rigs with small suckers, and on slip-bobbers with leeches later in the evening, just before dark. The day bite was deeper weedlines or small humps and the evening bite did find some walleye as shallow as 7 feet. Trolling speed for the pike was 2.5 to 3.5 MPH on the GPS, while the walleye were happy with 1.5 to 2.5 MPH.

Also, in the evening, we were able to find a few large mouth bass in 5-8 feet. Again, the bite was not fast and furious but we were able to catch and release a few fish this weekend. If you are going to chase walleye this coming weekend, I’d suggest starting deep if your fishing during the day. Jigging shiners or plastics off deep weed edges or deep humps might be the best way to go. Good luck to everyone!