With much anticipation, my good friend, Ron, and I headed north to Lake Winnibigoshish for some serious fishing. Our targets: anything that bites. J It’s been a number of years since we explored Winni, and this time it was to reconnect with all the great fishing this body of water has.
Friday morning arrived and we found a light breeze out of the SE. We decided to explore the early morning bass opportunities, and we didn’t find the fish too cooperative. We did find some nice jumbo perch hanging in very skinny water and the bass they just weren’t too hungry.
We moved out onto the big lake for some walleye action and we quickly found a good bite going on some rocks I have fished in the past, and again, in fairly shallow water. We drifted the areas and it produced numbers of nice fish under the slot…perfect! We continued to drift leeches and crawlers in this area, and leeches outperformed. We really wish we had minnows because when other boats moved in to our spot they had minnows and outperformed us 2-1 it seemed.
After dinner we decided to avoid the crowded walleye spot and we explored the many acres of water that doesn’t see much for pressure. We boated several miles from camp to find some more bass and pike again, and we had some fun with some nice fish before we got chased off the lake by an oncoming storm. Just when you think a storm is coming from one direction, it surrounds you in short order and you are in for some unfortunate times.
Saturday came and we found bright sunny skies and hardly a breeze. This is tough times for just about any species, and it proved to be a tough bite. We roamed all over through different lakes in search of panfish, bass, walleye and pike and it was a tough one. We found some active fish in some weeds shallow weeds trolling crankbaits on the big lake.
After a difficult Saturday, we switched things up and headed to Cass Lake on our return trip home. We headed to some old spots in anticipation to locate some bass, northern and walleye and, again, in the bright sunny skies and light to no wind it proved to be a struggle to convince fish to bite. We located some nice bluegills and even coaxed walleye in weeds with light tackle. The bass didn’t want to cooperate as we hoped.
On just about every inch of body of water we fished we observed the most incredible populations of baitfish. Baitfish were in the middle of the lakes, in the shallows and everywhere in between on the graph. As we boated across the lake, baitfish would surface. These fish had so much forage, and they were very well fed! Next time I’ll have to do better at matching my presentations to the conditions, but with our situation we couldn’t keep much bait alive very long in our remote location and the hot, dog days of summer.
How many baby ducks are in the belly of that bass? Wow.
Great stuff!!