Big Stone Lake, Mn Walleye 5-7-05

My partner Mike Barrett and I just got done fishing Big Stone Lake in Ortonville for 10 days. In those 10 days we saw a wide range of weather roll through. With Saturday 4-30 being the opener there were plenty of people in town ready to catch walleyes. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had different plans. Water temperatures had dropped almost 10 degrees from the previous week. The same thing happened last year and few fish were caught and this year was no different. We started off fishing from the dock at midnight, but came up blank and spent most of the time around the camp fire trying to stay warm. The owners of the cabin next to us did land 3 nice walleyes. We were up and on the water bright and early at sunrise and started by casting a shoreline area that usually spits a few fish each time for us. We managed to land a nice 18” fish within 10 minutes. We left shortly there after figuring we would find some more. Wrong! That fish was the only one we managed to boat on Saturday. The same held true for Sunday, with a goose egg on Monday. Monday was the worst with very strong and gusty winds with snow and sleet and water temps reaching their lowest at 44.

Tuesday was the last day of pre-fishing. The day started out with the boats covered in ice and air temperatures in the 20’s. It did however begin to get nicer with less wind and warming temperatures. We again only managed to catch 1 fish, but marked many others while trolling. We figured we could fine tune our presentation the following day to boat the fish we needed. Wednesday was the first day of the Lowrance-Sponsored Pro Team Walleye Tournament. We started the day casting 5 different shoreline areas, putting 2 fish in the boat. Next we began trolling the area we had marked the fish the previous day. On our first pass we caught one. The next pass we lost one and caught another. On our third pass we got a double and now had our 6 fish between 16” and 18”. Being a multiple day tournament we choose to leave the area and look for more fish to help us the rest of the tourney. We caught 1 more fish in each of 2 places we tried that helped us upgrade and weigh in at 11.94 lbs putting us in 6th.

On day 2 we again started by casting and again put 2 fish in the boat. With this tournament the top 20 qualify to fish the third day and start over at zero. Knowing this we just wanted to get to around 16lbs to assure us of making the cut. Next we went trolling again. When we got to our spot, we notice instead of just 3 of us fishing this area the previous day, there were now over a dozen boats. It took some searching, but we relocated the fish, caught 2 and left. Having 4 in the live well we know we would make the cut, and again went in search of new fish. We found another spot where we marked a lot of fish, and knew we could use. At the end of day 2 we had another 7.13lbs and finished 9th. On day 3 we started by casting just 2 areas and had 3 quick fish. We went to troll our #1 spot and only managed 1 fish. We did a lot of searching, but could not find them. There was again a lot of pressure, and we decided to try the spot we found the previous day. On our first 2 passes we marked a lot of fish right on the bottom, but couldn’t get them to go. We adjusted the depths of our cranks for our third and final pass as time was running out with only about 5 minutes of fishing time left. Almost immediately we caught a nice fish. By now the big motor was running and life jackets were on. Then we get another to fill our 6 fish limit. As my partner was reeling in the last line a big fish hits and really got our blood pumping. Unfortunately it was a large drum. As we weighed in the held the bigger weights and we began to get excited as we were in the last 4. We weighed 10.62lbs and watched as 2 teams went up but came just short with 9lbs each. Unfortunately the last team to weigh had 12lbs and took the win leaving us in 2nd.

The fishing should be real good this year on Big Stone. The average size fish we were catching was around 18" and the lake was slime free. No one crank worked best for us as the lure and color changed each day. While we didn’t have much luck doing it, I wouldn’t be afraid to pull some spinners as well. Expect to catch carp, drum, bass, and maybe even a perch like this one as well.