Walleyes Are Back

We found the walleyes!

My brother and I made it out fishing Sunday evening (5-13) and ended up catching nine walleyes (15" - 22") from 8:00pm - 10:45pm. We launched out of the west DNR landing and headed east to fish 7.5 FOW. Weather conditions were good with a steady South wind and 64F water temps.

We started out jigging leeches and 3" Berkly Gulp then changed over to dragging spinner rigs with night crawlers and only picked up a few pike. We changed our location and moved off of the south point and again fished 7 to 8 FOW. The steady south wind allowed us to drift along the 4 to 7 foot break and keep our baits in front of the fish but we couldn't get a bite.

Our original plan was to work small baits with a very slow presentation. We used this plan because of the cold front that moved in on Saturday night and we figured the fish would be less responsive to fast moving big baits. After working our setups for over 2 hours with no walleye activity we change over to trolling.
We setup using 3" wonder bread color bombers 2-3' deep and the smallest size trout colored tail dancers 3-4' deep on 8 lb test all back 65'. Our troll plan was to work from 8 to 6.5 FOW at 1.7mph. Before I could get the third rod set we had a pike on the line and as we were landing it our second rod went off. The walleye bite started at around 8pm and was steady until 10:45pm. All of our walleyes were caught in a 100 yard area in 7 FOW directly off of the point. We landed five fish that were under 15 inches and one perch.

I did fish Saturday afternoon for about five hours and ended up landing one 18" walleye in 5 FOW West of the Elks club. The fishing was very rough with a strong NE wind. Over all this year the fishing on the south shore along the Elks to the light house has been very slow for us.

I will be fishing Houghton on Thursday and Saturday this week and trying out my new 9.9 pro kicker....

Good luck.