Lake of the Woods,Mn walleye fishing report 7-13-8

I just returned from a 5 day trip up to Lake of The Woods out of the WigWam Resort. We had a great time pre-fishing for the Minnesota Tournament Trail event held this past Friday and Saturday. We arrived on Tuesday noon to a large number of sheep in the bay!!! Wind and more wind………Finally on Wednesday morning the lake laid down and we were on the water.

We started out on Wednesday by picking out an area along the Canadian Border heading out near Knight and Bridges Islands. We had decided to split up the two days we had of pre fishing and try some blades/spinners, pulling cranks and yes jig fishing!! We never had much success with either the blades or cranks……but boy did the jigs and shiner minnow combo go well for us. We caught plenty of sauger and walleye Tuesday and again on Wednesday. Wednesday we decided to fish some areas west of the Gap out of the Pine Island area. We fished out of Morris Point and the Fields areas heading towards Long Point. Some of these areas were near shore and some 5+ miles out on the lake in 32-34 few. Plenty of action to put some fish in the live well for dinner at the WigWam and to bring home. As for the jig fishing, we were anchoring up and jigging over the side of the boat. The colors of jigs that worked for us were gold, green/chartreuse, orange/gold. The wide gapped H20 Precision jigs from B-Fish-Tackle worked great for their hooking ability. You need a wide gapped hook when using a shiner minnow combo. These fish were holding tight to the bottom and were hard to see on the locator.

On Friday was the start of the first of the two day MTT events. The morning started out with a severe weather warning for the Baguette area. Lightning, hail, rain and more wind!!! Great day for a walleye tourney on the big lake! Well Mike Holt MTT Director and his great staff held the anglers back till 9:30 am start. You can always count of the MTT staff to be on top of the conditions and will be looking out for you and your fellow anglers. The severe weather had pasted and we were finally on our way down the Rainy River heading to the lake. The conditions now were 10-15 mph winds and a cloud cover from the passing morning storms. We headed north and had made it around 4 – 5 miles out on the lake when we ran into an increase in wind and 10 foot waves!!!! Conditions got worse very fast!! Mike Gangl my tourney partner and I slowed up and made a quick decision that we did not want to try and fish in those conditions. We managed to head back into the wind and waves to another area with less wind and waves. I just can’t tell you how fast that the lake conditions had changed from 2 footers to 10 footers!!! When fishing any body of water you need to be on top of your abilities and I just can’t say enough of how well Mike handled the big 2090 Warrior tiller and got us out of those waves.

We found an area north of Pine Island in 18 fow and set the anchor. We jig fished with shiners and managed to box our four slots for the tourney limit in the short 4 hours of fishing on this day. Most of the morning went by pretty fast with the storm delay and the severe lake conditions. Once we made in and through the weigh-in Mike and I found ourselves with a 12th place finish! I was just thanking the Lord for being back on land……the 12th place finish was a big bonus. Congrats to the Dickmeyer brothers on their 1st place fishing on Friday. After all the fun on this day…Mike and I decided not to fish on Saturday due to the 25-35 mph winds on the big lake. We were happy to head home with our 12th place finish on Friday. I’m looking forward to seeing how the guys fished in some very difficult conditions on Saturday.

Looking to catch some walleyes…its a great time to head up to the WigWam and have them put you on some great walleye fishing!!!

A big thanks to the MTT Staff on another well run event. And a big thanks to the WigWam staff for taking great care of us during our stay.