Lincoln Area Lakes Walleye Report

Below average temperatures have have kept the water temps at or near 70 degrees for the last few weeks thus keeping walleye shallow and easy to catch by trolling crankbaits. I’ve had a busy summer so far and have had a limited amount of time to get out. Last week I took some time to take my cousin Jaiden out for on last fishing trip before he heads off this week for Boot Camp.

Our morning bite started off a little slow with only a few fish coming to the boat. We trolled a few different depths and sorted through a few different baits until we found out what color they wanted. The 7 FOW water that was good for me earlier in the week seemed to be void of fish now but moving out to the 9-11 FOW put us right back in the action. The morning started out cloudy and cool and we stuck with some darker colored cranks. As the clouds thinned out we switched to dark chrome colors. This seemed to add a little flash but didn’t stray from what was working early with the darker colors.

Walleye weren’t the only species that were feeding that morning. We also hooked up with a dandy channel cat and a dandy crappie. Jaiden had a blast on his last fishing trip for a while. He’s off to boot camp this week and it looks like he will be stationed in Germany after he finishes with that. We’ve already got plans to hit the water when he comes home for 30 days starting sometime in November. I thanked him for his service and was glad we had such a great day on the water. I look forward to our next trip.

The weekend before I had a NWA tournament at Harlan on Saturday. I fished with my friend Todd as a sub. We had a decent day of prefishing on Friday. The fishing down there has been extremely tough for a few years. If fact there were 50+ boat tournaments where less than 5 keepers were caught. I really think things are finally starting to improve down there. There were 29 keepers caught during the Saturday tournament. Todd and I were able to manage 17 walleye that day, however only one of them was a keeper. It was a dandy 20.25 incher that weighed in at 3.74 lbs. That one little tank was good enough to get us a 5th place finish. The following day Todd and I were back home and decided to hit one of the Lincoln area lakes and had a decent afternoon on the water. We focused our efforts in 5-8 FOW and caught a couple decent fish including a 23 inch walleye that had to tip the scales at 4.5 + lbs.

I hope everyone is getting on the water this spring. The walleye bite all over entire state has been great this year. If you haven’t been out yet you need to now. For all you trollers out there the Leadcore bite should heat back up in the weeks to come. I hate the hot late July weather but the leadcore bite that time of year is one of my favorites.