Lake Puckaway early spring walleye fishing frenzy. We had some hot action in Montello.
Great day on the water with some good freinds and my family. We were pitching 3/8th hair jigs and plastics to the shorelines and dragging back to the boat while being anchored along the river banks. Hot colors for the hair jigs was purple and white hair and also just plain dark purple as well. The river in this section below the Montello dam is not very wide and the depth is only about 7 feet deep. We had some fast cuurent and lots of boat traffic because the bite was hot . We were also using lindy rigs with floating jigs as well that was also producing some nice fish. The hot color for the floaters was yellow chart. Also we would just drift the river and pitch the hair jigs and drag the lindy rigs. The live bait of chose was large fat heads on the lindy rigs and on the hair jigs as well but most of the fish came on the hair without live bait. We also found 1 area where the gar were so thick and they would just slam the hair jigs before the jig would get to the bottom. These walleyes early in the mourning would be so high surfacing at the top of the water some days and you could see them for a couple of hours till the sun got too brite.
As the boat traffic got too much in the day we would drop down river into deeper holes away from the crowd and find some calmer water. We would change over to 1/8th and 1/16 once plain jigs tipped with fatheads and also down size our lindy rigs to small split shots and colored hooks with small beads of variuos colors. We verticled jigged and let out the split shots rigs so they were far enough away to not interfere with our jigging. The jigs were the erie stand up jigs that have been my favorite jigs for 25 years now. I really like using these jigs for verticle jigging and they work great for just dragging down the river as well. The shape of the heads on these jigs really help dig into the fast current to stay on the bottom .
This last week we have been fishing by the mouth of the lake with high numbers of fish being caught as well. This is where the Fox River dumps into Lake Puckaway by Rivers End Resort. The current is a lot slower in this area and its a pretty relaxed drift with some great fishing through out the day. We are just drifting this area in the no-wake area of the river with split shot rigs and just dragging 1/16th and 1/32nd jigs with leeches and crawlers. In this shallow water of 5 to 7 feet of water, we long line both of these rigs to get the baits away from the boat for better succes. Colors that work good are white all the way to dark green , the color just does not to seem to matter most of the time. The liny rigs in this are I like to run the soft rubber glow beads for getting their attention to bite . Most of the fish that we have been catching, range 13 inches all the way up 28 inches so far, with a lot of nice eaters daily can be had for a meal once in awhile. Heres a picture of me with my personal best for the season so far on Puckaway and she still swimming today. Be safe out there and have a great season. By the mouth of Lake Puckaway there are some new logs just under the surface of the water so be carefull.
Nice report, Jeff!