Leech Lake Report 07-25-09

Sorry for the late post, but I figured better late than never. I haven’t had much for “free time” fishing this Spring/Summer. So, when I found out I had last Saturday open I decided to hit the water with my Dad. Neither of us had been to Leech in a while so that’s where we decided to go.

We launched my boat out of Stony Point access/campground and as we figured, the cold front wind was still rippin hard from the NW. We decided to concentrate on windblown areas first, as those always seem to produce the best for us on Leech. Being Stony was about as windblown as you can get we started there. The game plan as it usually is for me, was to first locate fish with the use of my graph. I started shallow on the top side of the point and drove around heading deeper until I started to mark fish. It appeared most of the fish were pushed deep in this area, but they were absolutely thick in 20′-27’FOW. Over the next couple hours we tried every presentation we could think of with only a couple small fish to show for it, so we decide to move on.

The next spot was a rough few miles across the lake, but shortly after we arrived I marked a few nice fish in 12FOW. Exactly what I wanted to see, shallow and hopefully aggressive fish. Not knowing how aggressive they would be we started out rigging with a leech on one line and a crawler on the other. It didn’t take us long and we each boated a nice 17” keeper. As soon as we marked fish we would get bit, so in an effort to cover more ground we switched over to our spinner rigs. We were running a chartreuse spinner/crawler combo and a silver spinner/leech combo at about 1 mph. I always like to start off with a little variety to see what they were in the mood for, but it turns out they were in the mood to eat! We had equal success on both rigs and filled our limit in a short order. We continued to catch fish ranging from 12”-26”, with most of those fish being in the mid range.

After a few hours the bite slowed, so we went in search of the next hot spot. We tried a number of areas that have been great to me in the past, but ended up with not much to show for it. We were marking plenty of fish deep, but had a hard time getting fish of any size to go. We had already had a great day so with the box full of eyes we decided to call her a day a little early and go clean supper.

My Dad and I used to spend as much time as possible out in the boat and now it seems like we’re always too busy. He’s the reason I have such a passion for this great sport, so it’s a shame to admit this was our first open water trip of the year together. I know everyone gets caught up in the day to day things and just get TOO BUSY! I’m as guilty as anyone, but I hope everyone can take this as a little reminder to find the time. Even if it’s only for the day, make time to go fishing with the people that really matter in life, your family! Thanks for the great trip Dad!