Well we have finally had a taste of what I hope is much more to come and that is warmer weather. After a long nasty cold winter it is a relief to see higher temps and also makes it much more enjoyable fishing on the ice. The only problem now is that all of our snow melted a bit and got soft and now has froze again adding another 4 to 5 inches of ice and we do not need any more ice.
We have still been spending a lot of time doing trips for the whitefish which has been fantastic this whole season with limit catches of quality fish coming pretty much daily. Our strongest approach at these fish continues to be using Rapala Jigging raps along with the jigging shad raps in sizes #2 and #3 with natural colors such as black and gold and also working very well has been the perch color.
The past few days we have spent some time fishing for Walleyes in some areas we begin to fish them come late ice which we are not late ice yet but the calendar says we are approaching spring soon. We have been seeing quite a few walleyes in these areas with each evening being different when we have cloud cover and weather in the area the fish tend to be more active and the evenings that have high skies our windows are much smaller being right before it gets dark.
One evening we iced 6 walleyes the largest being around 25 inches along with losing another bigger fish then the past couple evenings have been much tougher icing only a few fish or nothing at all. We have been having our success using both Rapala Jigging Raps in size #5 and also getting some fish using 1/4 oz VMC Hammer Head jigs with emerald shiners on them jigging both presentations about 18 inches off bottom. We also have had a few nice bonus catches of perch fishing for walleyes and these perch have been from 13 to 15 inches in length really quality perch. We will still have several weeks of safe ice here on the Bay and the fishing for game fish such as Walleyes Northern Pike along with Brown Trout should only begin to get better. Be safe and good fishing.
Paul Delaney
www.lateeyessportfishing.com