Lincoln Area Lakes Walleye Report Late July

I had a couple of chances to get out for a few hours this weekend. Water temps are at their highest for the summer on the Lincoln area lakes and the fish are eating more than ever. This can make catching them easy if you can hit their feed times and key in on their feeding zones.

Friday evening I was joined by my neighbor and good friend Bob Yelkin. We hit the water around 5:00 and headed out to see what we could mark on my Lowrance. I started marking lots of bait fish that were scattered throughout the lakes main basin. I continued looking until I found some tighter schools of shad and saw a few nice arches under them. These fish were ready to eat and I had a depth to key in on. I still had my trolling rods rigged up with lead core and decided to start with a mix of crank bait styles. It didn’t take more than 10 minutes to land our first walleye. It was a nice 18 inch keeper. It was caught on a jointed shad rap running 2 colors of lead core targeting the 15-17 foot depth zone. It wasn’t long and we were running 4 jointed baits and catching fish on all 4 lines. We ended the evening around 9:45 and had caught 7 walleye with 4 of them being keepers.

Saturday afternoon I picked up my 9 year old nephew Trevor. He was in Lincoln for the weekend at his sisters swim meet. I knew he would be bored hanging out at the pool all day so I thought I’d see if he wanted to go fishing. I always enjoy taking him fishing and I really wanted to see him catch his first ever walleye. We hit the water around 4:00 and it took a little while to convince him that trolling would be just as fun as the usual slip bobber fishing we do. Well it only took a couple of 7 inch crappie to get him to think trolling was fun. It was a little tough for him to handle an 8 foot trolling rod by himself but he managed to get better at it. It was a good thing he got the hang of those trolling rods because his next fish was the biggest of his life and it was also his first walleye. It measured out at 17 1/2 inches and was big enough to keep. He was so excited he was going to get to eat some walleye for supper on Sunday. We caught a few more small crappie before it started to rain. With the sky getting darker in the west we decided to load the boat and call it a day.

Don’t let these dog days of summer keep you from fishing. I really don’t care for this hot weather myself but I’ll put up with a little sweat to catch a few walleyes. I really like this evening bite I’ve found and hope to make it out a couple of more times before my next tournament.