The fall walleye & sauger bite continues to be a work in progress. As of this past weekend, the bite was slightly better than the previous two weeks of October but not even close to where we hope to see it in another week or two.
There are fish willing to bite if you’re willing to put in some work finding them and working through several different presentations in order to trigger them.
This past weekend, we caught some on plain jig/minnow comob’s, hair jigs tipped with minnows, blade baits and crank baits. The hard part has been figuring out which one they want and when they want it.
The feeding windows are pretty short right now and because of that, it’s critical to be in one of the right spots at the right time. I know I missed a few opportunities this past weekend because we were not where we needed to be when we needed to be there. It’s pretty easy to see that now after the fact but it still bugs me when that happens to my boat. I feel like I should know better but it still seems to happen from time to time.
The biggest reason why my boat ends up being in the wrong place at the wrong time is because at this time of the year, I’m often looking in a few uncoventional places for a hawg walleye. We found one on Sunday morning but unfortunately, it shook the blade about five feet below the boat and we never did get to see her. That was disheartening to say the least but it happens. Just gotta get back on the horse and keep after it when something like that happens.
18-21 feet of water was by far our best depth this past weekend but we did pop a couple from 15′ early in the morning and again at last light.
We are still catching quite a few small walleyes & saugers as well. They’re pretty good at stealing minnows off the jigs without getting hooked.
Blades probably took the most fish for us overall with jig/minnow combo’s coming in second and crankbaits third. Crankbaits did take the biggest fish for us though and the crankbait bite should continue to be good for the next two or three weeks.
If you don’t much care for trolling, hair jigs & blade baits should both be really good over the next two weeks as well.
Mike Benthause biggest fish on Saturday. He didn’t care one bit that it was a catfish. Sure put up a good fight!
Sunday morning fog didn’t help make the air temperature feel any warmer. Looked kind of cool though!
As usual, Great Report Joel! Really some nice lookin’ fish
Great job Joel, hopefully a long Indian summer is in store so we can see more of your fall reports.
Joel,
You have some skinny cats up there… We hit it yesterday and found the bite to be tough. Couple shorties, and one nice sauger 21 inches. Beautiful day though and we hope to get back soon when the fireworks start.