Central Nebraska Sherman Walleye Action

I love Sherman in July!! I don’t know why, but when the lake gets tough for most people in July, it get’s much easier for me. I was wondering if I was going to miss out on the July bite this year since I have been boatless for several months but the stars finally fell into line and the fishing gods sent a great 692 Ranger my way. Her maiden voyage, with me at the controls, was definitely a successful one and to get to spend some of that time with my son and wife was great.

When I got up to the lake at 6:00am my plan was to head to the upper end of the lake and troll the timber in the creek channel. When I got to a good spot to start my troll everything looked great, the lake is still really high for this time of year and the 3 stumps that are on the upper end are just out of the water so they serve as great markers. Well everything about the area was set up perfect, but the fish were nowhere to be found. I pulled up and down the cannel, out on the flat and up into some of the skinnier water and I couldn’t get anything to go. On the bright side though, even with bumping my plugs off the trees, I didn’t loose a single one!! I trolled the area for about an hour or so and decided to go to plan B. What a great decision!!

Plan B is an area of the lake that has been very kind to me in the last couple of years. Now for those of you who know Sherman, my directions are probably different form yours because I can’t seem to get comfortable with true north and south up there. Anyway, Plan B was to fish the water in front of the high banks south of the islands. I as able to mark some fish in 18’-22’ f.o.w. so that is where I started. I tied on a couple of flicker shads, let out 80’ and 90’ of fireline and away I went. The next several hours were nothing short of amazing for me. The first walleye of the day was a nice fat 19”er soon followed up by a 19.5” and then a 23” fish. This year Sherman went to a bag limit that protects 20”-28” fish and also set their limit at 2 fish from 15”-20” and 1 fish over 28”, so the 23” eye went back and I was only a big fish away from the very tough to fill Sherman limit. I caught several more eyes in the 17”-20” range and all were coming off the same chrome clown flicker shad.

By this time my wife had called and said that the kids were all finally up and around and they were on their way. I really wanted them to be able to get in on the bite and have my 3 year old son try to land his first walleye trolling. Shortly after getting off the phone with my wife, I hooked into a good fish. You know those ones that just won’t move. There was a bit of a wind that I was fishing with so I put the boat into neutral and the fight was on. This fish really made me work. It stayed down for what seemed like forever and it made several runs as it got close to the boat that really put my blood pressure into overload. When I did finally get the fish to the surface and could see that it was a really nice walleye. Now how was I going to net this thing by myself? Well, somehow it all turned out great and I was able to land my personal best 29” walleye. I was shaking so bad and was so nervous I thought I was going to puke!!!! I was also around several boats and the time and I have no idea how I didn’t run any of them over. It was all just perfect!

Once I finally got settled down and back to fishing, I caught a few more fish but there were now a lot of boats around and the wind was really starting to pick up. By the time that my wife and son got to the lake, the wind had picked up and the fishing had slowed down. We worked for about an hour before we were finally able to get hooked up with a small fish and Ryder got to try to land his first walleye. He was doing really great and working so hard at trying to turn the reel as fast as he could. The look on his face was one that I will never forget. He was able to get the fish to about 15’ behind the boat before the hooks worked their way loose and away the fish swim, but it was great anyway. We fished for a little while linger but the wind was getting to Ryder and we called it a day.

An outing like this is so grounding. It seems like life has really been in the way for about the last 10 months or so and good fun family time has been hard to come by. Its days like yesterday that really make a person look at life and what the real priorities are. We already have a camping night set for Friday!!!