Its not often that I can remember growing up and fishing southern Minnesota lakes with my dad that we boated a nice limit of walleyes, but that’s exactly what we were able to do recently. This past winter my dad and his buddy were able to do quite well on the walleyes during the early morning hours. We knew the fish were out there during the open water season, but had never really figured them out until recently.
Rumor had it that a few fish were getting caught recently and fortunatly I happened to have a free day. I grabed every box I had with shallow diving cranks, a couple trolling rods and the planer boards and headed south. We got on the water about 10am and water temps were 70. Almost bath water. The water was dirty and high as the docks at the access were about 4" under water. We started off trolling original raps with little success. Next we broke out some Husky Jerks, Rouges, Fire stick minnows and other baits and started catching fish at a pretty good clip. I have to believe it was the rattles in the bait that made the difference as the water we were fishing was very stained. We ran our baits 25-40′ behind planers boards we had 100′ from the boat. The boards helped a ton as well as we were trolling in less than 6′ of water. In that shallow of water you know the fish would spook around the boat.
In 4 hours we had our 12 fish limit along with some shorties and bigger fish up to 24" that went back along with a few misses. We even brought in the bait once with a big old carp scale. Those fish made a good fish fry for the family that evening. I believe one of the things that had these fish active was all the water dumping in and flowing out of the lake. Last fall when we had all that rain we were able to catch quite a few nice walleyes throwing jigs with white Gulp grubs and the lake was high and water was flowing good than as well.
It just goes to prove you don’t have to always head up north to catch good fish. Many time there are great spots right out your back door!
Very nice report Mike! Isn’t it great when you can put together a pattern and have a good day fishing on an less familiar body of water? That’s what I love about fishing, the challenge of putting it together over a wide spectrum of conditions and putting those fish in the boat!
Just curious, has anyone been out on Albert Lea lake? I heard that the DNR reported some amazing numbers of walleye in there.
trolled it a few weeks ago with limited success (5 total) but had a good time
Nothing better than catching some walleyes with your father. I grew up fishing some southern minnesota lakes including Elysian and Madison. Good to see those southern lakes are still putting out some fish.
My dad was out again after work and actually got my mom out in his boat he has now for the first time. They managed 8 fish in just a couple hours. His buddy was out the day before with his daughters that had never caught a walleye and boated 19 with 5 over 20″. I almost wished I wasn’t booked for Mile Lacs the next 2 weekends.
Great Report Mike
Great to see so got your dad in on the hot bite