Longville, MN Area Walleye Report

The only thing good about the near record cold temps we had on our family vacation to the Longville, MN area, was that it gave me an extra excuse to motor around and learn new areas to fish. That’s mostly because the bite was so slow, wetting a line was about the last way to get a fish to bite during last week’s nasty northern cold front. I spent a good deal of time locating structure, and more importantly, where fish held on that structure during the high winds of last Wed. and Thurs. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly did my best to try and catch a fish. Every "slow" technique I could muster, from Bobberin’ to Riggin’, and everything in-between. Nothing but fat marks on the graph and a slug of waypoints to show for it.

You can’t eat waypoints, but once the weather turns in your favor, you can sure eat the walleyes that come off of them. A gravel shelf just off the edge of a main-lake hump held fish consistently throughout the high-winds and cold, though the fish were on a different part than I marked them on previously. Once the wind switched, moving to the "new" wind-blown side of the hump on that same gravel shelf had us nearly two limits of eyes in only an hour of early Sunday morning fishing. Most fish were in the 15-17" range, with the big eye of the trip taping at 20 1/2". Alas, an hour was all we had, with family schedules and obligations to live up to. Leaving biting fish is torture, and I hope not to endure that feeling anytime soon.

These fish were abundant, though somewhat spreadout along the lip of this shelf, so lindy-rigging with slip-sinkers (rock runners) and leeches was the ticket. Color combinations of note were anything in contrasting colors, pink hook with chart. bead, chart. hook with red bead, etc. What a deal…find the fish, and wait them out until they’re willing to bite. Not the most effective pattern, but I’ll take it.

We weren’t skunked any of the tough days, and Saturday we actually landed a reasonable number of fish. About the only clear winner during the cold/wind was a slow-death hook/crawler with a glow bead. My guess is that this had to do more with boat control however than anything, as the variable and gusty winds didn’t allow much in the way of ultra-finesse or slow applications. Pulling blades and crawler harnesses proved too fast for these sluggish fish. However, the 0.6-0.8mph speeds we pulled the slow death hooks were fast enough to allow me some boat control in tight structure, while slow enough to urge the ‘eyes to slurp up our offerings. You earn these fish!

All in all, our trip was a great one, even though the weather (and fish) only cooperated for a day or two. We’ll be back, as I love this area’s abundant lakes and fishing opportunities!

Joel